Ben Fountain Quotes

You never find yourself until you face the truth.

I just need to know that I did the very best I could and that I was true to myself.

One of the other reasons for writing this book [My Beloved World] was to hold on to the person you first met. More of the world knows about me now and follows me in a way that never happened before. I didn't want me, the inside of me, to change. Because I liked Sonia, the Sonia who has been. So another reason for writing the book was to hold on to that - whatever the best in Sonia was, to try to capture it.

I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself.

If you just sit and spend time with yourself - you were born as you, just you, and that's how you're gonna die. Why do we spend the time in between trying to not be ourselves? That's what meditation is. You just sit with yourself. Through all of it. It's like John Patrick Shanley said: "Where the terror is, you must go." Where the terror is, is where you must go.

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is.

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.

Man shall find his anchorage in self-recognition.

You can run, run, run away from a lot of things in life, but you can't run away from yourself. And the key to happiness is to understand and accept who you are.

Being so honest in my writing is cathartic.

I think I'm a pretty open book. We're all a work in progress, and I'm not ashamed to say that I don't have it all together - I don't really think anyone does.

I could do nice, but it's just not as much fun. Being nice isn't my biggest goal in life. I'm trying to be honest about who I am, and that's not always nice. I'm not always the world's cheerleader.

I suppose my life has always been about pleasing people, making sure they're all right, doing the right thing. Then, suddenly, you have to face up to what you want and be honest about it.

Writing about feeling disconnected has enabled me to connect, and that has been the most lovely thing of all.

It only seems that there is something more important for you to do than to just quietly be yourself.

I realized that I had to be honest about where I was, where I was coming from, and what I was trying to do.

Basically, I think that there are some characters that you can just allow the truth of your character as a human being in your real life to come through.

You can know what's in your life when you know what's in your heart.

Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.

I want to stop transforming and just start being.

I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.

I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be.

If you never lie to yourself, you'll always be happy with yourself, and eventually the person you wake up with and the person you go to sleep with is yourself.