I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love. — 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
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 Copy Share Image
You can go on like this for a very long time, and no one will notice. You keep thinking you're going to… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I guess I've been blessed with insomnia because I do a lot of my writing at night. Because I don't sleep as… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I never wanted to get to a point in my life where I knew what was going to happen next. I felt… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
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 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'd read an enormous amount but had spent so much time in my own head that I didn't have extensive social skills.… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I think that the way that I write stories is by instinct. You have some basic ideas - a character, or an… — 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… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Sometimes he thinks that if he could only trace the path of his life carefully enough, everything would become clear. The ways… — Dan Chaon 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 Copy Share Image
I can't understand how people can settle for having just one life. I remember we were in English class and we were… — Dan Chaon 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 Copy Share Image
I think at a certain point the book develops a certain weight, or pressure. You've been pushing the rock up the hill… — 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
