"Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth."
"Mostly we're motivated to control ourselves in public. Mostly. At home the motivation is much less clear. At home there's a bit of a lab for bad behavior. You can test things out without terrible consequences. Or maybe the consequences are there, but they are deferred, buried, much harder to detect."
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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 amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There's so much power and often very little accountability."
"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."