Ben Fountain

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.

— Ben Fountain

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

— Ben Fountain

. . . Any one episode, or even moment, in a person’s life is so complex, with so many layers of past and present, desire and indifference, drift and drive, consciousness and unconsciousness, that language is the best means we’ve found of approaching that kind of complexity.

— Ben Fountain

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.

— Ben Fountain

At the door to the locker room Dime asks [Tennis] to autograph his ball. Tennis 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 Tennis laughs and takes the Sharpie and signs his name to Dime's ball, and this will be the only autograph that Dime collects today.

— Ben Fountain

Billy tries to imagine the vast systems that support these athletes. They are among the best-cared for creatures in the history of the planet, beneficiaries of the best nutrition, the latest technologies, the finest medical care, they live at the very pinnacle of American innovation and abundance, which inspires an extraordinary thought - send them to fight the war! Send them just as they are this moment, well rested, suited up, psyched for brutal combat, send the entire NFL! Attack with all our bears and raiders, our ferocious redskins, our jets, eagles, falcons, chiefs, patriots, cowboys - how could a bunch of skinny hajjis in man-skits and sandals stand a chance against these all-Americans? Resistance is futile, oh Arab foes. Surrender now and save yourself a world of hurt, for our mighty football players cannot be stopped, they are so huge, so strong, so fearsome ripped that mere bombs and bullets bounce off their bones of steel. Submit, lest our awesome NFL show you straight to the flaming gates of hell!

— Ben Fountain

But I am scared. Everybody's scared."" You know what I mean, like scared. Like coward scared, like if you never went to begin with. But with everything you've done nobody's going to doubt you." Then she made a somewhat frantic speech about a website she found that listed how certain people had avoided Vietnam. Cheney, Four education deferments, then a hardship 3-A. Limbaugh,4-F thanks to a cyst on his ass. Pat Buchanan, 4-F. Newt Gingrich, grad school deferment. Karl Rove, did not serve. Bill O'Reilly, did not serve. John Ashcroft, did not serve. Bush, AWOL from the Air National Guard, with a check mark in the "do not volunteer" box as to service overseas." You see where I'm going with this?'" Well, yeah."" I'm just saying, those people want a war so bad, they can fight it themselves. Billy Lynn's done his part.

— Ben Fountain

He decides he wants both more or less. He’d like to hang with Beyoncé nicely, get to know her by doing small pleasant things together like playing board games and going out for ice cream, or how about this, a three-week trial run in some tropical paradise where they can hang together in that nice way and possibly fall in love, and meanwhile fuck each other’s brains out in their spare time. Furthermore, he wants both, he wants the entire body-soul connect because anything less is just demeaning.

— Ben Fountain

...he wonders by what process virtually any discussion about the war seems to profane these ultimate matters of life and death. As if to talk of such things properly we need a mode of speech near the equal of prayer, otherwise just shut, shut your yap and sit on it, silence being truer to the experience than the star-spangled spasm, the bittersweet sob, the redeeming hug, or whatever this fucking closure is that everybody's always talking about. They want it to be easy, and it's just not going to be.

— Ben Fountain

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

— Ben Fountain