Dan Chaon

“Poor me. A murderer who got caught before he could murder anybody.”

— Dan Chaon

“He was surprised at how useless his mind was.”

— Dan Chaon

A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.

— Dan Chaon

“If no one knows you, then you are no one.”

— Dan Chaon

“Maybe love, like suffering, is relative. ”

— Dan Chaon

I still think about the writers I loved when I was a kid.

— Dan Chaon

“He’s like a little bratwurst walking through the dog pound.”

— Dan Chaon

“Above the wrist? Or below the wrist?”

— Dan Chaon

“She looked at me as if I might be one of them a spy from the world of the ignorant.”

— Dan Chaon

“As mysterious as the part of himself that was chosen and loved by her, the part of himself that was there only…

— Dan Chaon

In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.

— Dan Chaon

Fiction is fun because you get to steal an identity and try to make it authentic.

— Dan Chaon

Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong.

— Dan Chaon

“You could say that they were sweet, or you could say that they were something out of a horror movie.”

— Dan Chaon

There is your car and the open road, the fabled lure of random adventure. You stand at the verge, and you could…

— Dan Chaon

I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life, but for me, the process of writing is really…

— Dan Chaon

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true…

— Dan Chaon

The danger in writing about a world you don't know very well is that you can get lost in it, and sometimes…

— Dan Chaon

There are all kinds of strange threads in American culture, and places where sympathy is extended and places where it isn't, and…

— Dan Chaon

A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you…

— Dan Chaon

I know a lot of people don't listen to music when they're writing because it distracts them, but for me it's almost…

— Dan Chaon

I'm certainly very influenced by what you would call 'contemporary headline horror,' stuff that is true crime or for one reason or…

— Dan Chaon

I have long admired Caroline Leavitt's probing insight into people, her wit and compassion, her ability to find humor in dark situations,…

— Dan Chaon

The earliest impetuses for writing, for me, were simply the strange things I happened to notice in my everyday life, stuff I…

— Dan Chaon

“In these journals I would frequently write messages to myself, a person whom I addressed as Big Me, or The Future Me.…

— Dan Chaon

There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about…

— Dan Chaon

“Beth had been a middle school science teacher and Joni was a librarian and they both had collections of weird stuff they…

— Dan Chaon

I usually have more than one thing I'm working on at once -- I've been working on three different novels. When I…

— Dan Chaon

I have to admit that 'Psychology Today' was one of the first magazines I started reading, back when I was 13 or…

— Dan Chaon

I never wanted to get to a point in my life where I knew what was going to happen next. I felt…

— Dan Chaon

“It's hard to believe that this is how it's done. That this is how we get here into the world, by accident…

— Dan Chaon

I'm working with fragments a lot of the time and the connective tissue isn't there yet. I think of it the way…

— Dan Chaon

“I have to admit that most of the time I read in the same way that I smoke and chew gum and…

— Dan Chaon

“The baby's large eyes settled on him, and though this has been one of his happiest nights in his whole life, it…

— Dan Chaon

“There are little wisps of jelly in a living brain. Deagle knows this well: neurons, transmitting signals - and the soul, so…

— Dan Chaon

“I've been talking to myself a lot lately. I don't know what that's about, but my mother was the same way. She…

— Dan Chaon

“The pirates would kiss Hayden, and sometimes they would cut off a hank of hair - 'as a reminder of yer kisses,…

— Dan Chaon

“It's hard to believe that this is how it's done. That this is how we get here into the world, by accident…

— Dan Chaon

One of the things I rarely do is write about sex.

— Dan Chaon

Plot was always secondary in my mind.

— Dan Chaon