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 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 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
A novel requires a certain kind of world building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
A lot of time, with stories, I'll start out with a title and try to dream myself into the story that it… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
It's not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn't. Because it occurred to me that… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
When I was younger I was attracted to people who had that kind of artifice - people who were incredibly polished and… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
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 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 wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
The kind of person I find myself interested in is a cross between being very emotionally complex and very immature. That's what… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I have to admit that 'Psychology Today' was one of the first magazines I started reading, back when I was 13 or… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 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 through the… — Dan Chaon 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 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 work. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
