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When I went for my medical school interview, I had an old paperback of 'Henderson the Rain King' in the pocket of my coat. I was wearing the best clothes I had - a pair of cords and a sport coat - but when I got to the office, all the other interviewees were lined up in their black suits.
Ethan Canin -
Bausch is a wonderful storyteller. He's a mature writer who has a lot of confidence in the quality of character. He doesn't need to hook you with a sneaky plot and zany characters.
Ethan Canin
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Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?
Ethan Canin -
I never set out to be a published writer.
Ethan Canin -
I'm becoming more of a novelist as I get older. The novel just seems the truer form. There's less artifice involved.
Ethan Canin -
The short story can't really hold an interesting event. It can't hold a death or a war or a loss of great magnitude the way either a long story or a novel can.
Ethan Canin -
Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.
Ethan Canin -
If you're concentrating so damn hard on a piece of mathematics or a musical - a piece of music or a piece of art, the restraint that holds the rest of - the rest of the world back off and vanishes in the rest of your life.
Ethan Canin
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I have a very bad memory. I can't remember my own life very well.
Ethan Canin -
I don't want to be movie-star famous. I want to move people with my writing.
Ethan Canin -
My idea of teaching literature is just to read great passages aloud or to look at it the way a writer does, which is what I try to do. Which is to say, 'How does this writer do this? How did he order his scenes? Do you notice any pattern to his sentences?'
Ethan Canin -
Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.
Ethan Canin -
If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.
Ethan Canin -
I think one of the battles for fiction writers is how much to invent or exaggerate.
Ethan Canin
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What's more interesting than the arc of lives?
Ethan Canin -
John Cheever was the first writer I ever read who sort of had that similar sensation that, you know, life is nasty, miserable, brutish and short, but that occasionally, there's a certain river of light, a kind word, a telling gesture that sort of illuminates something.
Ethan Canin -
I no longer practice medicine, but I can say that, for me, medicine was easier - and certainly less emotionally turbulent - than writing.
Ethan Canin -
I like medicine. Even if I was selling a million books a year, I would still be a doctor.
Ethan Canin -
Medicine involves dealing with people who are going through changes and cycles, often people trapped in bodies that are going out from under them. Spending time with them lets you think their way, gives you insights as a writer.
Ethan Canin -
I don't have a pen name, so I'm thinking of getting a doctor's name. What would you call that, a stethoscope name?
Ethan Canin
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You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.
Ethan Canin -
When you're in medicine - especially when you're a resident in a public hospital - you feel like you're doing your part. But not when you're a writer.
Ethan Canin -
It used to be you sat up in your attic and wrote and went down to a local cafe and talked with people there.
Ethan Canin -
There are writers who draw immediate attention to the fact that it's fiction. And I like some of that, but it doesn't really have the power.
Ethan Canin