Ben Schultz

“The colleague, no doubt, was not a connoisseur of the self-punishment, sad to think. This type of hygiene was foreign to her, no doubt. How did one even fraternize with people who could not entertain vivid scenarios of self-mutilation? How was the sexual act even possible if one's partner could not entertain being crushed under a truck, even as a cathartic exercise?”
― Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea: Stories

“This first. To understand this. Then maybe."
Julian was impressed. The doctor had devised a pretty good tombstone.
This first. To understand this. Then maybe.”
― Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea: Stories

“In Germany, they treated you with yourself. You were guilty of hiding you own cure inside of you, you selfish fuck.”
― Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea: Stories

“Had anyone, he wondered, ever studied the biology of being seen? The ravaging, the way it literally burned when you fetched up in someone's sight line and they took aim at you with their minds? He wanted to summon a look of kindness in return, a look that might forgive his miserly ways, his trespass on their ancient, superior city. But his face, as no one had ever needed to tell him, lacked the power to convey. He'd stopped trying to use it for silent communication, the semaphore you performed overseas, absent a shared language, to suggest you were not a murderer. Such facial language was for apes, or some mime troupe in Vermont. Mummenschanz people who emoted for a living. He ate with his face and spoke with it. Sometimes he hid it in his hands. That should have been enough.”
― Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea: Stories