Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Ben Fountain

Quote by Ben Fountain

“Not that she means anything by it, he knows. This is simply her lifelong habit of moderation at work, her need to tamp everything down to the routine, the modest, the tepid everyday. He understands the whole concept of boundaries, but there’s a point where this mania for normalizing turns toxic.”

Quote by Ben Fountain

Book:Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Create image

Work

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

In this thought-provoking novel, the author portrays the life of a young soldier, Billy Lynn, who returns to the United States after serving in Iraq. The story focuses on his brief stay in Dallas during a football game, where he is celebrated as a hero. The narrative examines the soldier's struggle to reintegrate into civilian life and the disconnect between the reality of war and the public's perception of it. more

Author

Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain is an American fiction writer known for his distinctive narrative style and profound insights into American Southern culture. His works often focus on the complex relationships between individuals and society, history, and reality, particularly in depicting the impact of war and conflict on individuals. more

You May Also Like

“Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions. I lost her thirty years ago [I was a child then]--nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age. She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her! And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words [not to mention my features and gestures], I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood which gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more. What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers.”

Life LessonsWomenMotherhoodMothers
Book:Character
Create image

“Mom, mom, mom, mom! A yowl rose from my gut, my bowels, my womb, raw as a birth cry but with no hope in it, a maddening howl, a roar, the water a wailing wall shattering around me. Unsyllabled, thoughtless, the cry rose from the oldest cells in my body. I hadn't known grief could be so primal, so crude. The violence shook me. When it stopped, I fell to my knees in the shower, and the water called to the water in me; I wanted to melt, to run down the drain and under the city to the creek and then to the river thirty miles away. Mom, mom, mom, mom!”

GriefMothers
Author:Lorna Crozier
Create image