Dan Chaon Quotes

35 quotes in 814 categories

• Fiction is fun because you get to steal an identity and try to make it authentic.
• I usually have more than one thing I'm working on at once -- I've been working on three different novels. When I get stuck on…
• Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house…
• Imaginative empathy is one of the great gifts that humans have, and it means that we can live more than one life. We can picture…
• A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense…
• I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.
• Our sense of self is a kind of construct. It is in some ways like a novel, and it's like a fabric of fictions that…
• The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids.
• Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks you to 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 it's…
• I guess I'm curious about how people process grief and how they process loss. And I'm also interested in the ways in which an event…
• I have to admit that 'Psychology Today' was one of the first magazines I started reading, back when I was 13 or 14, because I…
• I usually have more than one thing I'm working on at once - I've been working on three different novels. When I get stuck on…
• I'm certainly very influenced by what you would call 'contemporary headline horror,' stuff that is true crime or for one reason or another catches our…
• I've had a lot of different lives. I was adopted, I grew up in Nebraska, and then I went to Northwestern... Then I had this…
• People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we…
• The thing that grounds you, and the thing that really gives you a sense of wholeness, is your family, friends and your community. Those are…
• There is your car and the open road, the fabled lure of random adventure. You stand at the verge, and you could become anything.
• You can go on like this for a very long time, and no one will notice. You keep thinking you're going to hit some sort…
• It doesn't matter what you do. In the end, you are going to be judged, and all the times that you're not at your most…

Browse Dan Chaon Quotes by Category