Ben Lerner Quotes

I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

Ben Lerner

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• Fiction
• Novel

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Quotes to Explore

• Because I had a lot of emotional upheaval in my life, I'm attracted to stories about characters whose lives are full of wounds and secrets. I'm not interested in who's going to ask me to the prom. I never went to a prom.

  

  Randa Haines
  • Life
  • Me
  • Emotional

• One thing that we decided very early in the relationship is that when he goes, we all go - the whole family.

  

  Camila Alves
  • Family
  • Relationship
  • Early

• In America, the stories we tell ourselves and we tell each other in fiction have to do with individualism. Every person here is the center of his or her own story. And our job as people and as characters is to find our own motivations and desires, to overcome conflicts and obstacles toward defining ourselves so that we grow and change.

  

  Adam Johnson
  • People
  • Job
  • America

• Global issues require common responses: Only together we can create the conditions to defeat Daesh and al Qaeda, block channels for terrorist financing, tackle foreign terrorist fighters.

  

  Federica Mogherini
  • Together
  • Common
  • Defeat

• Dallas was a Black and White society at that time; it didn't have the diversity it has now.

  

  Eddie Bernice Johnson
  • Time
  • Society
  • Black

• My family moved to Israel when I was eight until I was 10, and then we came back, and my parents split up. I was suddenly in a single-parent home and on scholarship. Fifth grade was such a hard year for me.

  

  Natasha Lyonne
  • Up
  • Family
  • Home

• I started playing guitar and writing songs when I was 15. I think what mainly sparked my interest was just the fact that I grew up listening to Cheryl King, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor, and was just always inspired by that sort of organic art, and organic songs and just very natural songwriting that came out of some of those artists.

  

  Kate Voegele
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Art

• People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Life
  • Knowing
  • Intellectual

• Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Selfish
  • Aim
  • Experiment

• Welcome those big, sticky, complicated problems. In them are your most powerful opportunities.

  

  Ralph Marston
  • Powerful
  • Problems
  • Welcome

• Even if you have a big tune, live crowds can get sick of it. It's not just about the song but also the staying power and if people have connected with it in a certain way. I know that the tracks I put more emotion and depth into are the ones that have the staying power in clubs.

  

  Calvin Harris
  • People
  • Live
  • Power

• I do believe that our ability to jam the Trump brand is somewhat limited. I think we can chip away at it, but ultimately, the way to undermine the Trump brand is a better product in the political marketplace, if you'll forgive the capitalist metaphor.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • Believe
  • Political
  • Trump

• I tend to sort of over-accessorize, but to feel empowered, I strip it all down and become minimal so that it's almost counterintuitive.

  

  Karen Elson
  • Feel
  • Down
  • Almost

• I watch a lot of television, for better or worse, and I am particularly interested in what Michael Moore brought up in 'Bowling for Columbine,' which is the idea that they're selling a narrative of fear.

  

  Dan Gilroy Breakfast Club
  • Fear
  • Idea
  • Television

• If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.

  

  Sam Phillips
  • Man
  • Find
  • Sound

• If I'm going to compare myself to a candidate, it's Rick Scott. It's not Donald Trump.

  

  Carlos Beruff
  • Trump

• I want to direct but I think I'd be bloody awful and I don't want to produce but I think I'd be a very good producer because if I believed in something I'd be able to protect it.

  

  Christopher Eccleston
  • Good

• If you can serve everyone who visits you, you must be doing well in business.

  

  Ahmet Davutoglu
  • Business

• No one can look bad when you've been lit for six hours.

  

  Kate Winslet
  • Bad
  • You
  • Look

• I feel like that when I read certain feminist blogs or feminist magazines, where it's not even so much we've gone backwards, it's that I'm bored. Or it's like, oh wow, kids today are still dealing with the same exact issues.

  

  Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill
  • Kids
  • Today
  • Bored

• It took me years of attempts and failed drafts before I finally wrote the elegies I needed to write.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Me
  • Years
  • Drafts

• We didn't do cotillions or anything. My family made fun of the pageants.

  

  Parker Posey
  • Family
  • Fun
  • Made

• I am thinking of the onion again. . . . Not self-righteous like the proletarian potato, nor a siren like the apple. No show-off like the banana. But a modest, self-effacing vegetable, questioning, introspective, peeling itself away, or merely radiating halos like ripples.

  

  Erica Jong
  • Thinking
  • Modesty
  • Questioning

• I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

  

  Ben Lerner
  • Write
  • Fiction
  • Novel