107 Quotes by Ethan Canin

I don't want to be movie-star famous. I want to move people with my writing.

Every time I'd sing or play piano when I was a child, my dad would yell up from the basement, 'That's B-flat!'

My idea of teaching literature is just to read great passages aloud or to look at it the way a writer does, which is what I try to do. Which is to say, 'How does this writer do this? How did he order his scenes? Do you notice any pattern to his sentences?'

There once was this powerful, both capital and political, class who cared about supporting and affirming a solid middle class in this country.

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

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

I think one of the things that is essential for happiness in life, or at least for non-sadness, is producing something. I guess that's why I spend so much time and agony writing books. But working on carpentry is sort of like all the pleasure with none of the agony.

Fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition, small disappointed hope.

Your first book is kind of a labor of ignorance. You don't realize the difficulty of it. Your second book is sort of a labor of fear. Then you sort of either hit a stride, or you don't.