First, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“In the next room, perhaps twenty people were sitting around, drinking what looked like wine out of wine-glasses. They were the sort of people William and Louisa used to be in the habit of knowing, a crowd of elegant furniture,… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“-Lara is a weasel. I've always hated her. The only happy week I had as a child was when she fell from the roof… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
I'd say writing is easier for me now than it once was, but I do less of it. — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“Our knowledge about ourselves is our least reliable knowledge. Yet, so thoroughly do we ordinarily champion our own cause that it is acknowledged effective… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you? — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“We are born in this cemetery, but must not despair. -Piet Soron, 1847” — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different. — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
Americans are genuinely and profoundly anti-intellectual. They are especially so in their pleasure-seeking, which is epically banal. — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another. — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“Can you imagine? That you can say something, offhand, and it can matter, it can really matter to someone else? Can you imagine what… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“One cultivates one's life, one's friends, one's means, one's hopes. One goes from place to place, from triumph to triumph, in search of ambition… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“The whole thing about people living on in memory is a crock of shit. The best you can do is try to remember what… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse! — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
