107 Quotes by Ethan Canin

In people like us, the craving is as strong as the craving for food or water, the yearning for touch or light or love. I was looking for something--a diversion, an occupation, an unwavering force--that would elevate me, that would lift me out of the melancholy dissection of my own interior geography that otherwise would have consumed me pitilessly, as it had my father. I wanted to fly above myself-- if only for a few hours--and look down in tranquility upon my life.

As soon as we conform anything to language, we’ve changed it. Use a word and you’ve altered the world. The poets know this. It’s what they try so hard to avoid.

Happy isn't even a real idea," he said. "It's just like love. A reasonably skeptical person doesn't even know what it means.

One of the hallmarks of our politics now is that we tend to elect those who can campaign over those who can lead;

Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.

To have too much time is not good, you have to force yourself. And human beings aren’t meant for true freedom. I’ve learned that, having had it.

Art is so personal. I’m very comforted by the fact that certain movies that I love, other people hate. Certain books that I love, other people hate. You can’t please everybody.

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.

Don’t write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.