Ethan Canin

When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens. ”

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time. ”

The Internet is changing American fiction - and I don't mean in some kind of metaphysical way. ”

The short story can't really hold an interesting event. It can't hold a death or a war or a loss of great magnitude the way either a long story or a novel can. ”

I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention. ”

One of my favorite ways to find fictional inspiration, by the way, is to browse historical timelines. I also like world atlases - any country with a squiggly coastline seems to inspire me, as do visual dictionaries, those reclusive creatures of the reference shelf. ”

The historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one's own imagination. ”

I like certain people's work better than my own. ”

In medicine, there's a fairly large but still finite body of knowledge that you need at hand for most of your daily work. It takes a few years to learn it, but once it's there, it's there. With writing, on the other hand, every new book - indeed, every new story - is a fresh and terrifying reinvention of everything. ”

I finished 'America America,' and I knew I had to write another book, not just for personal reasons but because I had a contract. ”