Ben > Ben's Quotes

“The bathroom door opened and Griff emerged in a cloud of steam, the grand entrance of every B-movie alien I’d ever seen. Maybe this wasn’t Griff at all but some interstellar prankster setting me up. Forget about abductions, anal probes and secret alien cookbooks—the real fun was in poking at the Earthlings’ old heartaches.”
― Ben Monopoli, The Cranberry Hush

“For as long as we can remember,” [Griff] said, “I mean literally our whole conscious lives, time has been neatly divided into semesters and years. Each year completely distinguishable and unique. First grade, third grade. We didn’t measure by age, we measured by grade. Like I know I broke my arm in sixth grade but I’d have to do the math to figure out what year that was, or how old I was.”
― Ben Monopoli, The Cranberry Hush

“I have learned... that memories aren’t things that have to pile up and overwhelm you. They’re just colors... that shade all the new things you feel.”
― Ben Monopoli, The Cranberry Hush

“It's not about who you sleep with, or whether you know about sports or tools or have a pearl-wearing wife or whether commercials make you cry. [...] it's about whether you step up. When something hard comes along. A man steps up. He doesn't dodge it or run away from it or try to push it onto someone else. He steps up. Even if it isn't his responsibility. And that's why there are so many guys and so few men. Because stepping up is hard.”
― Ben Monopoli, The Painting of Porcupine City

“Fiction is true. It doesn’t have to factual to be true.”
― Ben Monopoli, The Painting of Porcupine City

“Art arises from loss. I wish this weren't the case. I wish that every time I met a new woman and she rocked my world, I was inspired to write my ass off. But that is not what happens. What happens is we lie around in bed eating chocolate and screwing. Art is what happens when things don't work out, when you're licking your wounds. Art is, to a larger extent than people would like to think, a productive licking of the wounds.”
― Steve Almond, Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America

“We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Volume 1

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin

“Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

“We’re sharing a bed, Vince. I’d say we’re a skooch past uncomfortable already, knowi’msayin?” “...”
― Ben Monopoli, The Cranberry Hush

“So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star