Ethan Canin Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
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Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.
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Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false.
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This is alchemy, and this is the office of Vulcan; he is the apothecary and chemist of the medicine.
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I had learned of Gertrude Stein's bon mot that medicine opened all doors. This prompted me, in different moods, to view my future life as literary psychiatrist, globe-trotting tropical disease specialist, or academic internist.
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I am interested in the way advances in medicine and palliative care mean more people now have the opportunity to plan their own deaths, and also plan for those who are left behind. What does that do to the grieving process?
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Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.
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I didn't invent forensic science and medicine. I just was one of the first people to recognize how interesting it is.
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Colleges will try to get the good students. That's the way to go. When I chaired my department of Materials Engineering at the Technion in 1990, we started a program for which we set the bar very high. It was the highest at the Technion, above electrical engineering and medicine.
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The first step to prescribing the right medicine is to recognize the cause of the illness. And, when it comes to what is ailing the global economy, extreme monetary easing has been more cause than cure. The sooner we recognize that, the stronger and more sustainable the global economic recovery will be.
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Hollywood does tend to portray CIA officers as totally the honey trap. Looks matter as they do in any profession. But the most important thing for me when I was working was blending into my environment.
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I am a lawyer by profession.
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If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.
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Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fiction is always written in German.
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If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?
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I don't think Pulp Fiction is hard to watch at all.
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I entered medicine to use it as a vehicle for social change.
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They wanted me to do movies and television when I was very young, and it was a big temptation, but I really thought the only way I could learn the profession was on the stage.
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Medicine is of all the Arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present behind all the arts.
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Lying very still and thinking very little is the most inexpensive medicine for all the sicknesses of the soul, and when administered with good intentions it grows more and more pleasant with each passing hour.
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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.
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The author with the greatest influence on me is my friend Stephen Harrigan, who critiques everything I write before I even bother to show it to my agent or editor. He's a truly great writer - author of Gates of the Alamo and other books you might know of, and his instincts about what's working in a story, and what's not, are just about perfect. My books would be very different without his influence.
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Medicine is a supremely useful profession. Fiction writing is not.
