Ethan Canin Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Ethan Canin:

In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.

I have a very bad memory. I can't remember my own life very well.

Ethan Canin

I'm a Jew. I think every Jew is dark in certain ways.

Ethan Canin

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

Ethan Canin

Medicine involves dealing with people who are going through changes and cycles, often people trapped in bodies that are going out from under them. Spending time with them lets you think their way, gives you insights as a writer.

Ethan Canin

The historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one's own imagination.

Ethan Canin

'How does your life turn out?' That's the ultimate novelistic question to me.

Ethan Canin

I'm fascinated by power, by those that can be publicly generous and privately ruthless.

Ethan Canin

It's nice when critics say 'Emperor of the Air' is an important book of stories.

Ethan Canin

I read for the sensation of becoming another person; I write for the same sensation.

Ethan Canin

I never set out to be a published writer.

Ethan Canin

When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens.

Ethan Canin

If you're concentrating so damn hard on a piece of mathematics or a musical - a piece of music or a piece of art, the restraint that holds the rest of - the rest of the world back off and vanishes in the rest of your life.

Ethan Canin

No one knows why books do well.

Ethan Canin

I teach a 14-week semester, and one of the things I do when I have to teach literature is, for the first half hour of the class, I have the students write the beginning of a new story every week. At the end of the semester, even if they have learned nothing about literature, at least they'll have 14 beginnings that they can take with them.

Ethan Canin

As I write, I try to be the character.

Ethan Canin

It's safe to say that all poets are manic-depressives, but fiction writers are on that scale, too.

Ethan Canin

I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention.

Ethan Canin

I don't think success makes one confident. I think it has more to do with character than circumstance.

Ethan Canin

No matter what writers say, most stories are about ourselves. The facts might change a little, but not much.

Ethan Canin

I no longer practice medicine, but I can say that, for me, medicine was easier - and certainly less emotionally turbulent - than writing.

Ethan Canin

It's such a risk to write a novel that it's easy to become conservative - you're spending what would be, for me, a couple of years of my life on a single idea. Which is maybe one of the reasons I write stories - if it doesn't work, you've only lost a month.

Ethan Canin

To me, point of view is everything.

Ethan Canin

I think even great writers only write two books that you might like. When I think of my touchstone writers like Saul Bellow, I think of 'Henderson the Rain King.' With Don DeLillo, I think of 'Libra.'

Ethan Canin

You know that thing people say, 'poetry is the hardest, stories are the second hardest, novels are the easiest?' I'm here to tell you that novels are the hardest. Writing a novel is unbelievably difficult. It's nightmarish.

Ethan Canin

People are surprised when Hollywood characters act the way a real person would.

Ethan Canin

I'm becoming more of a novelist as I get older. The novel just seems the truer form. There's less artifice involved.

Ethan Canin

In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.

Ethan Canin

I think Bellow's the greatest American writer of his century, personally. When I read him, I'm in awe.

Ethan Canin

I started out writing stories because that's all I wanted to read, but now I don't know if I'll ever write one again.

Ethan Canin

Although I think I'm relatively happy as a person, I think there's something unhappy at the root of all my writing. I'd say optimistic but unhappy. Nothing that's particularly original, other than that we're going to live and die, and terrible things happen.

Ethan Canin

In the winter, I read next to a wood-burning stove. In the summer, we have a place up in Michigan where I like to read in a hammock. It's almost entirely hidden by cedar trees and right up by the water. You can climb in there and see nothing but water and be seen by nobody. It's perfect.

Ethan Canin

I was never writing for commercial success. It's nice that it has come, but it is not important.

Ethan Canin

I finished 'America America,' and I knew I had to write another book, not just for personal reasons but because I had a contract.

Ethan Canin

When I went for my medical school interview, I had an old paperback of 'Henderson the Rain King' in the pocket of my coat. I was wearing the best clothes I had - a pair of cords and a sport coat - but when I got to the office, all the other interviewees were lined up in their black suits.

Ethan Canin