"Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth."
"It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability."
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Source: This week in fiction:Ben Marcus by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. May 11, 2013.
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"Being with him was like being alone underwater - everything was slow; nothing counted; I could not be harmed; I would feel dry and cold when I resurfaced."
"It's lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I've made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There's joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it's not yours."
"In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it's vivid, I find that I care about it, and it's part of me."
"Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there's nothing to be done about them."
"The common, the quotidian, is so much more unyielding to me, really stubborn and hard to work with, and I like this because it makes me think and it makes me worry. I can't just plunge my hand into the meat of it. I need new approaches."