American - Author | July 19, 1960 -
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.
Ethan Canin
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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.
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There has always been a tension in my life between the romantic and the practical. I can't hole myself up in a cabin and write down ideas for the rest of my life. I also need to be able to clean out a dog bite.
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Every time I'd sing or play piano when I was a child, my dad would yell up from the basement, 'That's B-flat!'
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There once was this powerful, both capital and political, class who cared about supporting and affirming a solid middle class in this country.
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I have a very bad memory. I can't remember my own life very well.
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Fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition, small disappointed hope.
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Your first book is kind of a labor of ignorance. You don't realize the difficulty of it. Your second book is sort of a labor of fear. Then you sort of either hit a stride, or you don't.
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John Cheever was the first writer I ever read who sort of had that similar sensation that, you know, life is nasty, miserable, brutish and short, but that occasionally, there's a certain river of light, a kind word, a telling gesture that sort of illuminates something.
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There's a beauty to math. Math is so simple. It's just one step after the next.
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I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention.
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Any writer who says he loves writing is crazy. Or lying.
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