Ethan Canin Quotes & Sayings

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

The forgotten of this country have a consistent history of turning on their champions, and I suppose the way working men and women have forsaken the very politicians who could help them most speaks of the primacy of emotion in politics. Perhaps the great decline of FDR's party, which was beginning in Henry Bonwiller's time, didn't come about because Democrats favored a logical argument over a moral one, but simply because they clung to the idea that either one mattered at all. — Ethan Canin

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

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

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

You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die. — Ethan Canin

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 Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.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

I think fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition. — Ethan Canin

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

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

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

THERE WERE AT least two ways to solve any problem: from the beginning, which was the usual approach; and from the end, which was not. Likewise, every theorem could be proved either directly, using incremental logic, or indirectly, by conjecturing the negative of the hypothesis and demonstrating a contradiction. Thus there were at least four permutations to choose from. — Ethan Canin

The connectors have gained the upper hand. We isolationists languish in the caves. Take — Ethan Canin

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

Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story. — Ethan Canin

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

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

Does one grow wise in increments? By fractioning a life and then summing it? By stacking sand? 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. Live long enough and you will solve them all. — 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

Are there not a thousand forms of sorrow? Is the sorrow of death the same as the sorrow of knowing the pain in a child's future? What about the melancholy of music? Is it the same as the melancholy of a summer dusk? Is the loss I was feeling for my father the same I would have felt for a man better-fit to the world, a man who might have thrown a baseball with me or taken me out in the mornings to fish? Both we call grief. I don't think we have words for our feelings any more than we have words for our thoughts. — Ethan Canin

In people like us, the craving is as strong as the craving for food or water, the yearning for touch or light or love. I was looking for something--a diversion, an occupation, an unwavering force--that would elevate me, that would lift me out of the melancholy dissection of my own interior geography that otherwise would have consumed me pitilessly, as it had my father. I wanted to fly above myself-- if only for a few hours--and look down in tranquility upon my life. — Ethan Canin

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

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

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

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

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

In those days Cheboygan was already something of a resort town, although Milo didn't realize this fact until he was older. For most of his childhood, he knew only the deep woods that ran behind their property - 350 acres of sugar maple, beech, and evergreen that had managed to remain unlogged during the huge timber harvests that had denuded much of the rest of the state. He spent a good part of his days inside this forest. The soil there was padded with a layer of decaying leaves and needles whose scents mingled to form a cool spice in his nose. He didn't notice the smell when he was in it so much as feel its absence when he wasn't. School, home, any building he had to spend time in - they all left him with the feeling that something had been cleaned away. — Ethan Canin