I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.

- Ben Lerner

Every relationship can feel saturated by market logic or at best purchased at the price of the immiseration of others.

- Ben Lerner

I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the text…

- Ben Lerner

What interests me about fiction is, in part, its flickering edge between realism and where a tear in the fabric of a story lets in some other sort of…

- Ben Lerner

The problem is that if you're self-conscious about being a person on whom nothing is lost, isn't something lost - some kind of presence? You're distr…

- Ben Lerner

I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however fli…

- Ben Lerner

Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me - that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art - emphasize how capitalism is a tot…

- Ben Lerner

Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you've the chance.

- Ben Lerner

I don't want to write poems that are just really clear about how I'm aware of all the traps involved in writing poetry; I don't want to write fiction…

- Ben Lerner