Quotes from Ben Fountain

My first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era.

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

Nobody ever came to America with a starry-eyed dream of working for starvation wages.

After Bush was elected in 2004 - please note that I didn't say 're-elected' - and I was walking around in my befuzzed state of confusion and low-grade depression, I set out more or systematically to read writers who'd grappled with that fundamental question of what America is, why it is the way it is.

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

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.

Surely it's no coincidence that the Era of the AUMF, the Era of Endless War, is also the Golden Era of the Chickenhawk. We keep electing leaders who, on the most basic experiential level, literally have no idea what they're doing.

American history is not clean.

The collective memory of America is short.

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

Political rights notwithstanding, 'freedom' rings awfully hollow when you're getting nickel-and-dimed to death in your everyday 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.

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

People rarely grow in humility once they reach the White House.

The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I've done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but.

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

The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there's always the Kessler.

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.

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.

I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.

I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That's a great way to freeze up.

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.

Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.

If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.