Ben Fountain

“I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world, and machines - TV, telephone, cars - were still more or less ancillary, and computers were unheard of in everyday life.”

“The Gilded Age robber barons - the Goulds, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans and Rockefellers - did quite well under laissez-faire. Most of the rest of Americans were still stuck in the ditch, with little to no economic security, life expectancy of roughly 45 years, and horrific infant mortality rates that claimed 300 babies per 1,000 in the cities.”

“We, America, elected Trump. Putin didn't do it, nor 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.”

“Democracy's premise rests on the notion that the collective wisdom of the majority will prove right more often than it's wrong; that given sufficient opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, your population will develop its talents, its intellect, its better judgment; that over time its capacity for discernment and self-correction will be enlarged.”

“Obama was elected on the shoulders of an incipient movement that he allowed to languish once he became president.”

“Even a cursory run through American history shows exceptionalism has been used to justify bloodshed, oppression, and profit.”

“If you're looking for the phony in American politics, you could do worse than follow the money.”

“The New Deal saved capitalism - saved it from the big-time capitalists - though many of the big-timers didn't see it that way.”

“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.”

“From the start, Trump's rallies had the air of the tent revival, that same hot thrum of militant exorcism and ecstasy.”

“...he wonders by what process virtually any discussion about the war seems to profane these ultimate matters of life and death. As if to talk of such things properly we need a mode of speech near the equal of prayer, otherwise just shut, shut your yap and sit on it, silence being truer to the experience than the star-spangled spasm, the bittersweet sob, the redeeming hug, or whatever this fucking closure is that everybody's always talking about. They want it to be easy and it's just not going to be.”

“If you want to see a bunch of happy Americans, go out to opening day at any baseball stadium in the land.”

“In the arsenal of the phony, the politics of God is one of the deadliest punches to the sweet spot of the American mind.”

“The collective memory of America is short.”

“The American identity is mind-bogglingly various.”

“Americans care a lot about authenticity, 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.”

“Why?' He kept asking in his sweetly belling voice, its tone as pure as marbles swirled around a crystal pail. Why him wun up the tree? Why him nest up theah? Why him gadder nuts? Why? Why? Why? And Billy answering every question to the best of his ability, as if anything less would disrespect the deep and maybe even divine force that drove his little nephew toward universal knowledge.”