On the seat beside him, in between him and his father…

“Maybe love, like suffering, is relative. ”

— Dan Chaon

Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future.

— Dan Chaon

For the last few years I've tried to force myself to write at least one page every day, which doesn't sound like much but…

— 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 or design,…

— Dan Chaon

I also have just my own limits about stuff. I'm not interested in writing graphically about sexual assault for example. I feel like the…

— Dan Chaon

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

— Dan Chaon

“Outside, the sleet had gotten thicker. You could hear it pebbling against the large glass windows, you could see it swirling wildly through the…

— Dan Chaon

I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out.

— Dan Chaon

Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work.

— 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 hated to…

— Dan Chaon

“Your Mom's Car. Think about that. Try to wrap your brain around the supernatural and spiritual implications that the name bears down you. Your…

— Dan Chaon

“He pictures amputated human arms flopping like fish down the center of the road; syringes floating on beds of liposuctioned fat; gelatinous human eyeballs…

— Dan Chaon

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

— Dan Chaon

“It’s called apophenia. It’s the tendency we humans have to find meaning in disconnected information. For example, some people believe in what’s called the…

— Dan Chaon

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

— Dan Chaon