Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you've the chance.
Ben LernerI guess when I'm frightened or in pain or maybe very bored I've tried to hold myself together by imposing a narrative order on the experience as it happens.
Ben LernerHenry James claim that if you want to be a novelist you should be somebody on whom nothing is lost.
Ben LernerThe story and the poem are obviously changed by being placed in the novel, so in a sense they're no longer the works that preceded the novel.
Ben Lerner