Ethan Canin Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. Roads are necessary, but the fact that we don't fully recognize that when you build a road you're doing more than building a road - you're building the future development of your city. And, that's what's never dawned on people. It still doesn't, in a way.

Richard Lamm

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

Ethan Canin

#5. 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

#6. 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

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

Ethan Canin

#8. 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

#9. 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

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

Ethan Canin

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before.

Francoise Sagan

#16. In a vast & huge country like India, e-governance is the only way for effective delivery unto the last.

Narendra Modi

#17. Everyone you know and all the people you meet have the potential to be someone important in the lives of others.

John C. Maxwell

#18. My mom and dad came into my room, and even though it was really not big enough for all three of us, they lay on either side of the bed with me and we all watched ANTM on the little TV in my room.

John Green

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

Ethan Canin

#20. You know, a Communist's whole life work is based on complaint of how everything is done ... So if they ever get their country running good they will defeat their own cause.

Will Rogers

#21. 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

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

Ethan Canin

#23. On Australia Day 2010, as we enter this second decade of the 21st century, Australians can be optimistic about our future, but we cannot afford to mistake optimism for complacency.

Kevin Rudd

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. My father made false teeth. Unfortunately, during the Depression, not many people could afford them, and my parents lost their home.

Al Feldstein

#27. The ability comes naturally," replied Kell. "The proficiency takes work. Just as I explained during every one of your lessons." The

V.E Schwab

#28. [G]enius is a true degenerative psychosis belonging to the group of moral insanity . . .

Cesare Lombroso

#29. There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others.

Edmund Burke

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

Ethan Canin

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. 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