Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
This is simply her lifelong habit of moderation at work, her need to tamp everything down to the routine, the modest, the tepid everyday. He understands the whole concept of boundaries, but there’s a point where this mania for normalizing turns toxic.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
How does it all come to be, that’s what he wants to know, not just the how but the why of all this stuff. Only in America, apparently. Only America could take such a product-intensive sport and grow it into the civic necessity it is today.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Never do Americans sound so much like a bunch of drunks as when celebrating the end of their national anthem.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
a way it’s so easy, all he has to do is say what they want to hear and they’re happy, they love him, everybody gets along.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
the risks are never fully revealed until you commit.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
why, please, do they play the national anthem before games anyway? The Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears, these are two privately owned, for-profit corporations, these their contractual employees taking the field. As well play the national anthem at the top of every commercial, before every board meeting, with every deposit and withdrawal you ma
... See moreBen Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
How much reality can unreality take?
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Talk is cheap, I got that, but gimme a break. Talk is cheap but money screams, this is our country, guys. And I fear for it. I think we should all fear for it.”