Ethan Canin Quotes
-
There are some advantages to being a writer: you do generally get better as you get older. I think I understand things better. When I was a kid, I was kind of guessing at the emotion. Now I'm interested in writing more difficult books, books that confront the facts of life, of death and dying and failure - the majority of life. You write outwardly imaginative books when you're younger. When you're older you apply imagination to internal experience.
-
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.
-
It's safe to say that all poets are manic-depressives, but fiction writers are on that scale, too.
-
I think Bellow's the greatest American writer of his century, personally. When I read him, I'm in awe.
-
Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?
-
Fame is a problem of perspective.
-
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.
-
I like to write about the moment of light in the hour of darkness.
-
I was never writing for commercial success. It's nice that it has come, but it is not important.
-
There's a beauty to math. Math is so simple. It's just one step after the next.
-
I like certain people's work better than my own.
-
No matter what writers say, most stories are about ourselves. The facts might change a little, but not much.
-
I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much...people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov.
-
What's more interesting than the arc of lives?
-
Writers of literature make very little money.
-
I'm a Jew. I think every Jew is dark in certain ways.
-
Any writer who says he loves writing is crazy. Or lying.
-
You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.
-
Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.
-
I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention.
-
I work with wood a lot. I like building. I think of building. I would love to buy land on some water somewhere and build a house. That'd be nice.
-
The Internet is changing American fiction - and I don't mean in some kind of metaphysical way.
-
You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die.
-
Art is so personal. I'm very comforted by the fact that certain movies that I love, other people hate. Certain books that I love, other people hate. You can't please everybody.