Ben Fountain Quotes:- Ben Fountain (born 1958) is an American 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).
Inspirational Ben Fountain Quotes
“The main thing about writing is… writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.”
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 eventually.”
Ben Fountain
“Let the record reflect: the American people are a bunch of suckers.”
Ben Fountain
“In the arsenal of the phony, the politics of God is one of the deadliest punches to the sweet spot of the American mind.”
Ben Fountain
“American history is not clean.”
Ben Fountain
“We, America, elected Trump. Putin didn’t do it, nor did the trolls in St. Petersburg with their zillions of busy bots. They may well have plucked certain strings in the national psyche – played us like a dimestore ukulele – but we were keen to be plucked.”
Ben Fountain
“The American identity is mind-bogglingly various.”
Ben Fountain
“People rarely grow in humility once they reach the White House.”
Ben Fountain
Powerful Ben Fountain Quotes
“Pretty much any day is a good day to go to the ballpark, but that first day of the season is special. It’s spring. The grass is green. Pessimism is impossible – at least, until the other team scores.”
Ben Fountain
“My first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era.”
Ben Fountain
“If you’re looking for the phony in American politics, you could do worse than follow the money.”
Ben Fountain
“If you want to see a bunch of happy Americans, go out to an opening day at any baseball stadium in the land.”
Ben Fountain
“Surely it’s no coincidence that the Era of the AUMF, the Era of Endless War, is also the Golden Era of the Chickenhawk. We keep electing leaders who, on the most basic experiential level, literally have no idea what they’re doing.”
Ben Fountain
“Obama was elected on the shoulders of an incipient movement that he allowed to languish once he became president.”
Ben Fountain
“From the start, Trump’s rallies had the air of the tent revival, that same hot thrum of militant exorcism and ecstasy.”
Ben Fountain
“The collective memory of America is short.”
Ben Fountain
Top 10 Ben Fountain Quotes
“Nobody ever came to America with a starry-eyed dream of working for starvation wages.”
Ben Fountain
“Political rights notwithstanding, ‘freedom’ rings awfully hollow when you’re getting nickel-and-dimed to death in your everyday life.”
Ben Fountain
“I’m ashamed and embarrassed to say that I’ve read very little of David Foster Wallace’s work. It’s a huge gap in my education, one of many.”
Ben Fountain
“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
“I never listen to music when I’m writing.”
Ben Fountain
“‘Late bloomer is another way of saying ‘slow learner.'”
Ben Fountain
“Americans care a lot about authenticity, and rightly so. Every election is a quest for the genuine article. This is precisely what makes the long con of American politics such a rich and mystifying study.”
Ben Fountain
“Even a cursory run through American history shows exceptionalism has been used to justify bloodshed, oppression, and profit.”
Ben Fountain
“In truly demagogic fashion, Trump bypassed the head and spoke directly to the gut, to the biles and bubbling acids of raw emotion.”
Ben Fountain
“The national framework of social insurance – social security, unemployment and disability benefits, work programs, and workers’ compensation – protected citizens from the kinds of risks that private markets couldn’t or wouldn’t insure.”
Ben Fountain
“The New Deal saved capitalism – saved it from the big-time capitalists – though many of the big-timers didn’t see it that way.”
Ben Fountain
