Quotes from Ethan Canin

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.

In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.

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

The only successful way to write, and the only one I have found, is to be the character. Give up on trying to control them. Writers always talk about hearing voices. That's what they mean.

I like medicine. Even if I was selling a million books a year, I would still be a doctor.

I read for the sensation of becoming another person; I write for the same sensation.

I still don't know whether I know how to write a sentence.

I think Bellow's the greatest American writer of his century, personally. When I read him, I'm in awe.

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

When I went for my medical school interview, I had an old paperback of 'Henderson the Rain King' in the pocket of my coat. I was wearing the best clothes I had - a pair of cords and a sport coat - but when I got to the office, all the other interviewees were lined up in their black suits.

There once was this powerful, both capital and political, class who cared about supporting and affirming a solid middle class in this country.

People are surprised when Hollywood characters act the way a real person would.

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

You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.

I think that's what poets try to do: They try to sidestep neurology and go straight to meaning.

Point of view gets me. If I can feel like a character rather than a reader, I'll read that book.

To me, point of view is everything.

I was never writing for commercial success. It's nice that it has come, but it is not important.

I don't think success makes one confident. I think it has more to do with character than circumstance.

You have to look at the value of different kinds of words. Adjectives weaken, and adverbs come even farther down the line. Verbs are strong; verbs and nouns.

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.

It's nice when critics say 'Emperor of the Air' is an important book of stories.

It used to be you sat up in your attic and wrote and went down to a local cafe and talked with people there.

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.