Quotes from Dan Chaon

The people who control this country are the real gangsters. You know that, right? And if you play by their rules, you're nothing but their slave.

Their house was about a mile outside of town. The kids would play outdoors, in the backyard and the large stubble field behind the house. Dusk seemed to last for hours, and when it was finally dark they would sit under the porch light, catching thickly buzzing June bugs and moths, or even an occasional toad who hopped into the circle of light, tempted by the halo of insects that floated around the bare orange lightbulb next to the front door

I never understood why people from the 1980s thought there would be flying cars. It just seemed really dangerous and impractical to me, but they all talked about it, so it must have been a thing. Meanwhile, my dream for the future was that it wouldn't involve mass extinction and large-scale water shortages and cannibalism.

The desire to remake that shrinking expanse of life they were still allotted, to make use of it, to fill it up with possibility. Oh please: one more transformation.

we pulled into the garden center, where "Carol of the Bells" was blaring out of tinny speakers that had been mounted on poles. It was like the kind of music you'd play if Santa was a serial killer.

circumstances of life— The events of life— The people around me in life— Do not make me the way I am. They reveal the way I am.

It's very hard — weirdly hard — to clear your mind of all that crap so that you can just sit down and write and find that place where you're just involved and enjoying the imaginary place you've discovered. All the other "problems" with writing are just puzzles, and they can be interesting to try to crack, even when it's frustrating.

We see things not as they are, but as we are. Because it is the 'I' behind the 'eye' that does the seeing.

Let us say that this, all of this, has a logic to it. We understand each other, don't we? Are we not, you and I, both of us spirits? Reader, do not ask me who at this very moment is dreaming you. Do not ask me when you are going to die. Do not ask me where the gold is buried.

and the thing that shocked her the most was how quickly such absences began to close. even after a few weeks, you could see how soon her parents would be forgotten, how their presence became an absence, and then...what? What did you call an absence that ceased to become an absence? what do you call a hole that has been filled in?

Above the wrist? Or below the wrist?

On the seat beside him, in between him and his father, Ryan's severed hand is resting on a bed of ice in an eight-quart Styrofoam cooler.

How good it felt to be alone, stacking blocks. That's what came to him again, a kind of weight solidifying in his chest: how much he had loved to be alone - to be outside of his own life, a giant, sentient cloud looming over his imaginary city, hovering above it. There was a certain kind of blank omniscience that felt like his true self, at last.

He was surprised at how useless his mind was.

He pictures amputated human arms flopping like fish down the center of the road; syringes floating on beds of liposuctioned fat; gelatinous human eyeballs wiggling merrily as they roll down the highway; and so on. He could imagine other such grotesque stuff, but chooses not to.

Anxiety!" he said. "I've been there, plenty of times! And, you know, it's particularly hard during the first one, especially, because you're so invested in that idea of self. You grew up with that concept—you think there's a real you—and you have some longstanding attachments, people you've known, and you start to think about them. People you have to leave behind—

In the basement of Sydney's new house is a little room that is about the size and shape of a coffin.

And he saw now that it wasn't real. That it had never been real. He could feel that other life shrinking and losing its possibility, and he knew that it was something that he should never, ever, think of again.

We are always telling stories to ourselves, about ourselves...But we can control those stories...I believe that! Events in our life have meaning because we choose to give it to them

You look up for a moment and you're not sure which life is real. You've split yourself into so many honeycombed parts that they barely notice each other---all of them pacing, concurrently, parallel streams of though, and each one thinks of its self as me.

There's this spiral where you can't stop feeling horrible about your horrible self, and it makes you act more horrible.

What do you call that feeling when you're certain that the world is doomed? It's one of those feelings that's physical, like low blood sugar or too much caffeine, a message from the lizard brain. But for a moment you know that it's not just you. Not just Cleveland. It's everything. We, the creatures of the earth, are really and truly fucked.

I like to be adventurous in this, and so today I have a carrot, turmeric, a clove of garlic, frozen mango slices, half a banana, apple juice, and a shot of whiskey.

You have to wonder about these settlers of the Great Plains. These white people who in olden times killed the natives and laid claim to this dirt and stuck to it; who stranded their children and grandchildren with a birthright of dust. A collection of clapboard shacks with backyards full of unmown pigweed and junked cars and abandoned swing sets and withered, thirsty trees. Was the genocide worth it?