Ben H. Winters Quotes

• A pool of melancholy blooms in my chest and rushes into my body like deep-blue blood.

  Ben H. Winters

  Depression, Blue, Blood

  4 Copy quote

• It must be that there is something in the hearts of human beings, some natural fluid perhaps, that insists on happiness, even confronted with the most powerful arguments against it.

  Ben H. Winters

  Powerful, Heart, Argument

  4 Copy quote

• There is little novelty in the detective who cannot solve himself.

  Ben H. Winters

  Littles, Detectives, Novelty

  4 Copy quote

• We forget the conditions - not only in slavery - but after slavery, when there was this purposeful locking out of African Americans from economic opportunity. Or we forget today's incarceration rates, and educational and housing discrimination; all of these things. We pretend that everything that has happened happened long ago, and then we act as if we all now just treat each other equally, everything will be fine.

  Ben H. Winters

  Educational, Opportunity, Long

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.

  Ben H. Winters

  Falling In Love, Book, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Fiction has this special power. It has a power to clarify, to galvanize, to prophesy, and warn.

  Ben H. Winters

  Special, Fiction

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• It is part of what makes America great. That tradition of the free press, and also the tradition of this highly competitive market for investigative journalism. We're seeing, there's no question, that we're seeing a renaissance of that.

  Ben H. Winters

  America, Renaissance, Journalism

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• There is no shortage of ways that people profit indirectly from the misery and cruelty in other places. Even now, the shirts we wear and the tomatoes we eat. There are unfortunately unfair and inhumane conditions - including literal slavery - all over the world.

  Ben H. Winters

  People, World, Slavery

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• It is really something, the extent to which we allow ourselves to live without thinking of things that we know, in the abstract, are bad, and are going on right now, somewhere far away. We think, "Well, what are you gonna do?" In a way, that little instinct, that "What are you gonna do?" is the most dangerous thing in the world.

  Ben H. Winters

  Thinking, World, Far Away

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• In terms of optimism, I am optimistic. I do think that, in the long term, that America will right itself. I have to think so.

  Ben H. Winters

  Optimistic, Thinking, America

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• History is not the linear sort of movement toward better and better things.

  Ben H. Winters

  Movement, Linear

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• That one lesson that African American communities have learned over the centuries in America is that you can't just take for granted that things will steadily get better and better and better until they're great. It is fits and starts. It is backward and forward.

  Ben H. Winters

  America, Community, Get Better

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• The membrane between where we are right now and a very different reality, is so much thinner than we like to think. Things can go back, and things can go to the side, and things can go to places where we might not even have been on guard that they might go. I think that if there is a great gift that this [Donald Trump] election gave us, is this sort of sense of vigilance, the sense that we have to remain on guard. We have to support our free press.

  Ben H. Winters

  Reality, Thinking, Support

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• Here in America we have a man [Donald Trump] who is a master of a medium that is all about self-aggrandizement and/or cruelty to others. I have been off Twitter lately because I had this sudden sort of feeling of, this man is the president of this club and it's not a club that I want to be in. Sometimes I feel like, well, perhaps it's not right because as a political activist, this is where politics is happening right now. This is where the conversation is going on, but at the same time, I think there is something corrosive about it.

  Ben H. Winters

  Men, Thinking, America

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think it's a very stark marker of what kind of president we have that, from all available evidence, Donald Trump has not read a book, as an adult. This is not someone who sits down in the evening to consider the latest bestseller, let alone Tolstoy - but who is very very active on this medium that requires no discipline and no attention and no empathy. It is all about retweeting praise of oneself or very quickly or poorly considered, ill-typed, misspelled diatribes against other people.

  Ben H. Winters

  Book, Thinking, Discipline

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• A book is not a tweet. A book is not a half-hour television show. A book requires for both reader and writer sustained discipline attention. It asks you to immerse yourself in something and really deeply feel it.

  Ben H. Winters

  Book, Discipline, Half

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think that one thing fiction can offer, and must offer, is a place where someone's mind and their imagination can come to rest for a little while.

  Ben H. Winters

  Thinking, Imagination, Mind

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• We spend so much time, these days, on forms of literature that don't rise to be literature, and I'm speaking about Twitter posts and quick and hot takes on different websites. We sort of zoom from thing to thing like a hummingbird.

  Ben H. Winters

  Zoom, Hot, Different

  Source: www.slate.com

  6 Copy quote

• I think that fiction has this special responsibility or this special ability to help people to empathize, to demand of people that they understand other individuals and other people's experiences.

  Ben H. Winters

  Responsibility, Thinking, People

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• Our political divides have become our personal divides.

  Ben H. Winters

  Political, Divides

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• One thing we've learned about Donald Trump - this candidate first, president-elect, and now president - is that he has this sort of reptilian instinct for rooting out supposed enemies and finding people he can whip up distrust into rage.

  Ben H. Winters

  People, Enemy, President

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• One thing that fiction does is it allows us to take big picture questions, big issues, big moral and socio-political changes and see how they play out on real people's lives, with real individuals.

  Ben H. Winters

  Real, Play, Issues

  Source: www.slate.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think it's hard sometimes for people to grapple with the real-life consequences of political change. I think that, we as a culture, feel like politics is one sector of our lives that can feel apart from our personal lives and the cultural things we're interested in and the sports we watch. It feels like this separate, different thing.

  Ben H. Winters

  Sports, Real, Thinking

  Source: www.slate.com

  14 Copy quote

• The election of Donald Trump is, to me, this very clownish personality with no political experience, who had literally been using fascist slogans in his campaign. It had seemed so impossible. Even after he was elected, and even now, it still feels impossible. It felt like we had fallen into this wormhole of history.

  Ben H. Winters

  Political, Personality, Campaigns

  Source: www.slate.com

  8 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Paul Bowles

Seth Grahame-Smith

Steve Hockensmith

Ransom Riggs

Ann Leckie

Ian Doescher

Tana French

John Scalzi