“It's always terrible when you realize that you've married the wrong book.” — Dan Chaon Books Copy Share Image
“You really romanticize the white-trash period of your life,' Rain once said to me, which I thought was a little hurtful but… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
You can't tell people how to feel when they read your work. You can only hope to connect. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“I guess," says Deagle, finally, "I'll just have a pack of Marlboro Lights. That's what I used to smoke when I was… — Dan Chaon Human Copy Share Image
Identity issues are hardwired into the way I think about character - it's almost as if I can't get away from them… — Dan Chaon Character Copy Share Image
“On the seat beside him, in between him and his father, Ryan's severed hand is resting on a bed of ice in… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“But maybe it was just a sort of Bluebeard’s wife thing. You can’t help yourself: Open the door, you stupid bitch. Go… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
That's how I work, whether with stories or novels - they start with an image that comes to me in a daydream,… — Dan Chaon Books Copy Share Image
“He had built his own future brick by brick around himself but there were no doors or windows, at least that was… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“There is hardly anything at all. His life is suddenly a large, empty house, with each vacant room waiting to be furnished.… — Dan Chaon Life Copy Share Image
“And he saw now that it wasn't real. That it had never been real. He could feel that other life shrinking and… — Dan Chaon Mind Copy Share Image
Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I read a lot, but at the same time I'm not a particularly good or diligent or discriminating reader. I go through… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I love to write when I feel like everybody else is asleep and when I feel like the world is kind of… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I've been reading Peter Straub since I was a teenager, and his work is hardwired into my brain. A Dark Matter contains… — Dan Chaon Brain Copy Share Image
“Outside, the sleet had gotten thicker. You could hear it pebbling against the large glass windows, you could see it swirling wildly… — Dan Chaon Night Copy Share Image
How can you come to understand your life when even the beginning is so complicated: a single cell imprinted with the color… — Dan Chaon Alive Copy Share Image
“The first time she had tried to kill herself, she had intuited that there was no escape. She had seen, with sudden… — Dan Chaon Escape Copy Share Image
“It’s very hard — weirdly hard — to clear your mind of all that crap so that you can just sit down… — Dan Chaon Clear your mind Copy Share Image
“The true terror Jonah thought the true mystery of life was not that we are all going to die but that we… — Dan Chaon Jonah Copy Share Image
What if you believed that everything in life was like a prize? What if you thought of the world as a big… — Dan Chaon Alive Copy Share Image
It doesn't matter what you do. In the end, you are going to be judged, and all the times that you're not… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
For me, the process of writing a novel happens mostly in your head before you actually start writing. — Dan Chaon Books Copy Share Image
It had occurred to him that if the undead don't realize that they are dead, he might easily be one of them… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Our sense of self is a kind of construct. It is in some ways like a novel, and it's like a fabric… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I don't think anybody deals well with tragedy or grief, but maybe my characters are particularly bad at it. Which is why… — Dan Chaon Character Copy Share Image
In some ways all of my fiction is like a conversation I'm having with the writers I read when I was first… — Dan Chaon Book Copy Share Image
“The circumstances of life-the events of life-the people around me in life-do not make me the way I am. They reveal the… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died. — Dan Chaon Books Copy Share Image
“The type of person who will always be your friend, for as long as you can stand to keep disappointing her.” — Dan Chaon Friend Copy Share Image
I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out. — Dan Chaon College Copy Share Image
Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future. — Dan Chaon Alive Copy Share Image
Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light… — Dan Chaon Dark Copy Share Image
I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“The people who control this country are the real gangsters. You know that, right? And if you play by their rules, you're… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now… — Dan Chaon Death Copy Share Image
“In the basement of Sydney's new house is a little room that is about the size and shape of a coffin.” — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“The two of you stood there, side by side, and the tectonic plates of your lives began to shift and resettle, continents… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
