Quotes from Ben Fountain

God knows the war sucks, but he sees no great appeal in these tepid peacetime lives.

Coffee? Hell yes, coffee! Caffeine being one of the essential drugs.

Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.

America is one big maill with a country attached to it.

America loves to pray, God knows. America prays and prays and prays, it is the land of unchained prayer, and all this ceremonial praying is hard on Billy.

Society may not need you, strictly speaking, but some sort of use can usually be found.

everybody around here's such a major conservative till they get sick, get screwed over by their insurance company, their job goes over to China or whatever, then they're like, 'Oooooh, what happened?

But a lot of the time that's how it works, life gets so dark until we think all the light's gone out of us. But it's there, it's always there. If we just open the door a crack the light comes pouring in.

If a bullet's going to get you, it's already been fired.

So perhaps, it occurs to Billy, this is the whole point of civilization, the eating of beautiful meals and the taking of decorous dumps, in which case he is for it, having had a bellyful of the other way.

We were at the White House a couple of weeks ago, the man says, they had a state dinner for Prince Charles and Camilla. Listen, those royals are just the finest people, no pretensions to them whatsoever. You can talk to Prince Charles about anything. Billy nods. There's a silence. Just in time he asks, What did you talk about? Hunting, the man answers.

At the door to the locker room Dime asks [Ennis] to autograph his ball. Ennis rears back. He's chuckling but his eyes are wary. 'Why you want that? I'm just an old equipment hand, nobody cares about my autograph.' 'As far as I'm concerned you run the team,' Dime answers, so Ennis laughs and takes the Sharpie and signs his name to Dime's ball, and this will be the only autograph that Dime collects today.

Americans are children who must go somewhere else to grow up, and sometimes die.

I like to kill my enemies and listen to the lamentations of their women

Is this what they mean by courage? Simple doing all the things you were trained to do, albeit everything at once and very fast.

A harsh thing for any young man to hear, but this is part of every youth's education in the world, learning the risks are never fully revealed until you commit.

The singing triggers a soft detonation at his core, molten parts of him are flying everywhere and his ears ring to the tune of blast harmonics that only he can hear, but what is "The Star Spangled Banner" if not a love song?

No it was my choice. It's what I wanted to do. And I knew they'd probably send me to Iraq. It's not like anybody lied to me. She groans. Billy, all these mofos ever do is lie. You think if they halfway told the truth we'd even be in a fucking war? You know what I think, I think we don't deserve to have you guys die for us. No country that lets It's leaders lie like that deserves a single soldier to die for it.

There is a vast asymmetry in the dynamic here that Billy can't quite put his finger on, even though it's the elephant shitting all over the room.

the Revolution had reached that classic mature stage where it existed only for its own sake.

As if sorrow is the true reality? Without ever putting his mind to it, he's come to believe that loss is the standard trajectory.

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.

T]hey know they're being good when they thank the troops and their eyes shimmer with love for themselves and this tangible proof of their goodness.

Fake it till you make it, he reminds himself. This is how he's survived Army life so far.