Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain
Ben Fountainis an American fiction writer currently living in Dallas, Texas. He has won many awards including a PEN/Hemingway award for Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Storiesand the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for his debut novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
writing choral-music chamber-music
I never listen to music when I'm writing.
art real theater
The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler.
book writing years
I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.
long want polite
Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.
tunnels light ends
Maybe the light's at the other end of the tunnel.
book writing years
I thought when I started writing that I'd have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.
struggle thinking things-in-life
You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.
perfection world moments
There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.
country america way
Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
years eight effort
I started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little more than that to show for your efforts.
worst worst-day honored
It is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.
writing school law
The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I've done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but.
eye writing world
By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.
fighting thinking rights
If a person wants to be of any use to himself, he better insist on getting his fair share of beauty and pleasure, and if there's something about the system that's keeping him from getting his share, then I think he's well within his rights to fight to change that.