There is your car and the open road, the fabled lure of random adventure. You stand at the verge, and you could… — Dan Chaon Adventure Copy Share Image
I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life, but for me, the process of writing is really… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“You could say that they were sweet, or you could say that they were something out of a horror movie.” — Dan Chaon Horror 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
“It's always terrible when you realize that you've married the wrong book.” — Dan Chaon Books 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
“She looked at me as if I might be one of them a spy from the world of the ignorant.” — 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 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
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
“The desire to remake that shrinking expanse of life they were still allotted, to make use of it, to fill it up… — Dan Chaon Change 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… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
A lot of times in my short fiction there isn't much dramatized scene - there are a lot of short, interconnected bits,… — Dan Chaon Action Copy Share Image
Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs… — Dan Chaon Abacus Copy Share Image
I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from… — Dan Chaon Character 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
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
“It's hard to believe that this is how it's done. That this is how we get here into the world, by accident… — 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
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
There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about… — Dan Chaon About yourself Copy Share Image
“In these journals I would frequently write messages to myself, a person whom I addressed as Big Me, or The Future Me.… — Dan Chaon Self Copy Share Image
“As mysterious as the part of himself that was chosen and loved by her, the part of himself that was there only… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love. — Dan Chaon Acting Copy Share Image
Fiction is fun because you get to steal an identity and try to make it authentic. — Dan Chaon Fiction Copy Share Image
Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I always worry that knowing too much about a novel or a story early on in writing will close it down -… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love. — Dan Chaon Early love Copy Share Image
There's a lot of effort expended once you begin to completely trash your life. Sometimes, writing feels like this to me. — Dan Chaon Effort Copy Share Image
The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids. — 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
“You know what you learn when you study the legal system? Poor people pass down damage the way rich people pass down… — Dan Chaon Law 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
Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future. — Dan Chaon Alive 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
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
“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
