“The intern broke off from us to join one of the groups and Diane led us out of the room and into the adjacent kitchen, also giant, a thousand copper pots and pans hanging from a rack above an island the size of my apartment. I was introduced to Diane's friend, a handsome woman with silver hair, silv…”
— Ben Lerner,
“Overhead the stars occluded by light pollution were presences like words projected through time and I was aware that water surrounded the city, and that the water moved; I was aware of the delicacy of the bridges and tunnels spanning it, and of the traffic through those arteries, as though some cort…”
— Ben Lerner,
“As I made and unmade a variety of overlapping narratives out of its found footage, I felt acutely how many different days could be built out of a day, felt more possibility than determinism, the utopian glimmer of fiction. When I looked at my watch to see a unit of measure identical to the one displ…”
— Ben Lerner,
“Finally I found something on the list, something vital: instant coffee. I held the red plastic container, one of the last three on the shelf, held it like the marvel that it was: the seeds inside the purple fruits of coffee plants had been harvested on Andean slopes and roasted and ground and soaked…”
— Ben Lerner,
Tagged: Capitalist Movements
“I thought about kissing her on the forehead but rejected the idea immediately; whatever physical intimacy had opened up between us had dissolved with the storm; even that relatively avuncular gesture would be strange for both of us now. More than that: it was as though the physical intimacy with Ale…”
— Ben Lerner,
Tagged: The Emergency Changes Things
“If you want to pick out the devastated or soon-to-be-devastated from the stream of people leaving Mount Sinai, I decided, don't look for frank expressions of sorrow or concern, look for people whose faces resemble those of passengers deplaning after a long flight— a blank expression as the body begi…”
— Ben Lerner,