Quotes by Ben Fountain

About Ben Fountain:

Ben Fountain is 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: Stories (2007) and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for his debut novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2012).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That's a great way to freeze up.

Ben Fountain

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 no...

Ben Fountain

After Bush was elected in 2004 - please note that I didn't say 're-elected' - and I was walking around in my befuzzed state of confusion and low-grade depression, I set out more or systematically to read writers who'd grappled with that fundamental q...

Ben Fountain

'Late bloomer' is another way of saying 'slow learner.'

Ben Fountain

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it ...

Ben Fountain

Ultimately, culture, secular and otherwise, is a collection of survival strategies. The things that look like decoration—poetry, novels, music, dancing—if you strip away all the layers, are mechanisms for coping, surviving, understanding.

Ben Fountain

Much of life, fatherhood included, is the story of knowledge acquired too late: if only I’d known then what I know now, how much smarter, abler, stronger, I would have been. But nothing really prepares you for kids, for the swells of emotion that r...

Ben Fountain

I never listen to music when I'm writing.

Ben Fountain

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

Ben Fountain

Author Bio

  • NameBen Fountain
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • Born1958
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsNational Book Critics Circle Award; Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award