Existence Quote by Ben Dolnick

Writing is a sufficiently lonely and mysterious pastime that I don't begrudge myself a talisman or two, so long as they don't become ways…

— Ben Dolnick

Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would…

— Ben Dolnick

Literature is one of those realms in which giving out prizes can seem not merely dubious but positively obtuse.

— Ben Dolnick

During the couple of years it took to write 'At The Bottom of Everything', I decided, on the sort of hopeful whim that occasionally…

— Ben Dolnick

A short-story collection is harder to formulate pithy sentences about.

— Ben Dolnick

We humans, just like the animals in our zoos, were born into bodies whose workings are both mechanistically predictable and unfathomably complex. Put in…

— Ben Dolnick

Literary interviews are inevitably packed with the nuts and bolts of how writers do their work, and there's very little that aspiring writers do…

— Ben Dolnick

A novel is no mere assemblage of gears; it is a wild and living being. And how are you to discern the intentions of…

— Ben Dolnick

True atonement isn't the periodic shaving of karmic stubble via confessional; it requires deep, truthful change. It means doing the hardest thing of all:…

— Ben Dolnick

Beginning in middle school, the era of wide-margined, Bible-paged anthologies, short stories develop unpromising associations - and these associations often linger through college, when…

— Ben Dolnick

Every morning as I begin my work day, my computer presents me with the usual array of garbage: email, Twitter, updates on the state…

— Ben Dolnick

Enrichment happened to be my favorite time of day in the Children's Zoo, since it offered relief from the security-guard-esque standing around that makes…

— Ben Dolnick