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No matter what writers say, most stories are about ourselves. The facts might change a little, but not much.
Ethan Canin -
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.
Ethan Canin
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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.
Ethan Canin -
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.
Ethan Canin -
It's safe to say that all poets are manic-depressives, but fiction writers are on that scale, too.
Ethan Canin -
When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens.
Ethan Canin -
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.
Ethan Canin -
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.
Ethan Canin
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I think one of the things that is essential for happiness in life, or at least for non-sadness, is producing something. I guess that's why I spend so much time and agony writing books. But working on carpentry is sort of like all the pleasure with none of the agony.
Ethan Canin -
To me, point of view is everything.
Ethan Canin -
I was born in Ann Arbor. I lived for a while in Ohio; Pennsylvania, California for 10 years, and now in Boston. And I lived in Iowa for a couple of years, where I studied at the Writers Workshop.
Ethan Canin -
It's nice when critics say 'Emperor of the Air' is an important book of stories.
Ethan Canin -
There's a beauty to math. Math is so simple. It's just one step after the next.
Ethan Canin -
People are surprised when Hollywood characters act the way a real person would.
Ethan Canin
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To have too much time is not good, you have to force yourself. And human beings aren't meant for true freedom. I've learned that, having had it.
Ethan Canin -
The historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one's own imagination.
Ethan Canin -
The Internet is changing American fiction - and I don't mean in some kind of metaphysical way.
Ethan Canin -
Any writer who says he loves writing is crazy. Or lying.
Ethan Canin -
I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention.
Ethan Canin -
I was never writing for commercial success. It's nice that it has come, but it is not important.
Ethan Canin
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Writers of literature make very little money.
Ethan Canin -
I like certain people's work better than my own.
Ethan Canin -
I really enjoy the immediacy of the 'knife and gun clubs,' as they're so callously called. Emergency is a great place to learn about people.
Ethan Canin -
I think Bellow's the greatest American writer of his century, personally. When I read him, I'm in awe.
Ethan Canin