A Quote by Ben Fountain

I thought when I started writing that I'd have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.
After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job.
I became a vegetarian at 15. I was always an animal lover and, as a teenager, became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of eating meat. It was then that I started to research vegetarianism.
My writing became more and more minimalist. In the end, I couldn't write at all. For seven or eight years, I hardly wrote. But then I had a revelation. What if I did the opposite? What if, when a sentence or a scene was bad, I expanded it, and poured in more and more? After I started to do that, I became free in my writing.
When I started writing songs, I was doing it for myself and a small circle of friends. And gradually, over the years, an audience became involved.
I started writing when I was twenty. My first book came out when I was thirty-five. But I never expected that it would happen quickly.
When I first told people I was writing a book, some would say that was interesting, but others thought it was some holiday project and I would lose interest. I think my parents thought the same thing, and they were surprised when I kept going. I'm not sure I thought I would keep going, but then it became a big part of my life.
After literally hundreds of firefights, Chosen Company became increasingly battle-hardened. And they also became increasingly suspicious of their Afghan counterparts, believing - with their lives on the line at the end of the day - that they could only truly rely on themselves.
When it became easy enough to do dairy online, then I just thought, "Oh, I'll start doing this. I'll put the parts online that aren't going to get me in trouble. I'll save the rest for myself." It became also this kind of self-therapy. I could write about stuff that was bothering me, or personal stuff. And the very personal stuff I could edit out. But it was kind of the catharsis of getting it out and writing about it, that made me think, "Okay, I see why people do this, why they keep these diaries." So I thought, "Well, let's see what happens when I post some of it."
I started a gymnastics class at five years old, but it became serious at seven.
When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't true. What became important was to have a point of view.
After acting for four years, in five languages, theatre became my stepping stone to TV and cinema.
Change is one of the only constants in Buddhism; as meditation became the way I breathed in the days, this became apparent.
My mother became a believer, and then I became a believer. But when I was 43 years old, I began to think for myself, somehow, by fluke and by grace. And I thought, "Oh, my. I was so mistaken." The world isn't what I believed it to be. I am not what I believed me to be, and neither is anyone.
(Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience.
It wasn't until I hit 20 that I became an obsessive reader, I think, which feels a little funny considering I was a bookseller for five years and have been reviewing YA novels for four years.
I was a horrible student! It just sort of evolved as I started playing. I guess I became a master of it when I declared myself a wordsmith or a... word-play guy. As soon as I declared it and started that affirmation, I just became it.
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