Ethan Canin

I think even great writers only write two books that you might like. When I think of my touchstone writers like Saul Bellow, I think of 'Henderson the Rain King.' With Don DeLillo, I think of 'Libra.' ”

When I write, I can become this ecstatic, crazy fellow, hearing the voices and just loosening up and letting them grow. ”

Any writer who says he loves writing is crazy. Or lying. ”

If you're concentrating so damn hard on a piece of mathematics or a musical - a piece of music or a piece of art, the restraint that holds the rest of - the rest of the world back off and vanishes in the rest of your life. ”

I have a very bad memory. I can't remember my own life very well. ”

Politicians are already exaggerated. They're bigger than life in every way - their appetites, their ambitions, their personalities, their failings, their magnetism. In a sense, they're made for fiction. ”

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. ”

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. ”

How does your life turn out?' That's the ultimate novelistic question to me. ”

What's more interesting than the arc of lives? ”