Ben Dolnick > Quotes

“We're like the hands of a clock...chasing and escaping each other, losing and finding each other, around and around, again and again, joined way down at the root, no matter how far apart.”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“Neither of us had lived in a house since we were kids; apartments, it turns out, are very different things, psychologically. Houses—especially old and creaky houses—are individuals, somehow; their fronts are faces, their closets are pants pockets.”
― Ben Dolnick

“Driving yourself insane on the Internet is as easy as checking the weather.”
― Ben Dolnick, At the Bottom of Everything

“(This is similar, perhaps, to the tone in which I say, "Oh, they serve small plates, right?" when someone suggests eating at a tapas restaurant.) Beginning”
― Ben Dolnick, Shelf-Love

“Hannah’s Oberlin friends, a gaggle of food-co-op-looking people, came up and hugged me one by one.”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“There's almost nothing more discouraging than the sunset on a day when you've hardly gone outside.”
― Ben Dolnick, At the Bottom of Everything

“In every system of sufficient complexity there are periods of inexplicable, and usually meaningless, disruption.”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“But morning always comes, no matter what sort of night you’ve had; this is an underappreciated fact.”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“even his incontinence —”
― Ben Dolnick, Shelf-Love

“Your own life is terrifying, but life is an unending astonishment.”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“Okay,” Dr. Mital said. “Okay.” Dr. Mital was a young Indian woman with dramatic eye makeup and an engagement ring. “Do you know what your thoughts were, when he pushed you?” “I was thinking What the fuck you do that for, I’m gonna cut you.” “Okay. So”—reaching over to write illegibly on her whiteboard—“What the blank did you do that for, I want to cut you. Is that accurate?” “Yeah that’s it.” “And your feelings were anger, I think we can say. Would you say there was some fear in there?”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“I had a slight feeling of babysitting as we walked soberly along together using all our old phrases, making all our old jokes, not quite feeling all our old fondness.”
― Ben Dolnick, At the Bottom of Everything

“A mind made up is a formidable”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“This is how it happens: you can’t imagine a person being out of your life until you can’t imagine how she ever could have been in your life in the first place.”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“This is a thing that I’m sure is obvious to everyone else but is never-endingly astonishing to me: that every change, every life, consists of nothing but a series of days.”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks

“A person’s quality is inversely proportional to the quantity of explanation he demands before agreeing to help a friend in need.”
― Ben Dolnick, The Ghost Notebooks