Ethan Canin

Books were king, but now movies are king, and books are sort of ignored. So now there's no sense of a welcoming community where you live. ”

Families tend to artificially divide the world, imbuing one member with all the attributes and another with all the faults. But it's never that way. ”

Bausch is a wonderful storyteller. He's a mature writer who has a lot of confidence in the quality of character. He doesn't need to hook you with a sneaky plot and zany characters. ”

There's a beauty to math. Math is so simple. It's just one step after the next. ”

No matter what writers say, most stories are about ourselves. The facts might change a little, but not much. ”

I'm a craftsman type of teacher. I don't like the thematic type of teaching that takes place in a lot of colleges. ”

My idea of teaching literature is just to read great passages aloud or to look at it the way a writer does, which is what I try to do. Which is to say, 'How does this writer do this? How did he order his scenes? Do you notice any pattern to his sentences?' ”

Doubt is the enemy of mania. It's trying to get aloft strung with weights. The moment I like writing is three sentences in, when somehow those weights drop away, and you can invent. I cannot tell you the dread I have. ”

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!' ”

I like to write about the moment of light in the hour of darkness. ”