Ethan Canin Quotes

#1. One of the hallmarks of our politics now is that we tend to elect those who can campaign over those who can lead;

Ethan Canin

#2. He was going to think about her and think about her until she disappeared.

Ethan Canin

#3. 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

#4. 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 Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.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

#5. The connectors have gained the upper hand. We isolationists languish in the caves. Take

Ethan Canin

#6. I think fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition.

Ethan Canin

#7. 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

#8. I didn't answer. Mr. Dowater had a reputation for deadpan humor, a humor that was strangely similar to the low-level, sarcastic sniper fire offered by the school's underbleacher population of stoners and class-cutters. It didn't really pay to engage it. After

Ethan Canin

#9. Happy isn't even a real idea," he said. "It's just like love. A reasonably skeptical person doesn't even know what it means.

Ethan Canin

#10. As soon as we conform anything to language, we've changed it. Use a word and you've altered the world. The poets know this. It's what they try so hard to avoid.

Ethan Canin

#11. 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

#12. You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die.

Ethan Canin

#13. 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

#14. If someone doesn't like your fiction, it's really insulting.

Ethan Canin

#15. Tycho Brahe clung to a lousy idea, Hans. That's all it was. People like us - you must know this by now - we can't do that. We know damn well when we're right. We know a long time before anyone else even suspects it." He cleared his throat. "Or when we're wrong. That's how we live. That's how we die.

Ethan Canin

#16. People punch up," he said. "They punch the ones who are better than them. Nobody likes a kid who does something well. That

Ethan Canin

#17. Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.

Ethan Canin

#18. An infant, in his first sleepiness, must let go of the world; a man must learn to die. What comes between are the grains of sand. Ambition. Loss. Envy. Desire. Hatred. Love. Tenderness. Joy. Shame. Loneliness. Ecstasy. Ache. Surrender.

Ethan Canin

#19. I've solved a problem that was thought to be unsolvable. . . . And I learned that only a small part of it is talent. The rest is determination. . . . The will is everything.

Ethan Canin

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. There's no answer that ends the search, you know. Obviously, there never will be. The artist seeks to capture the world because the nature of every single object is a mystery to him. The philosopher addresses human nature because he's a stranger to every part of it. It

Ethan Canin

#24. 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