107 Quotes by Ethan Canin

Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?

I've discovered over the years that being subject to both the adoration and the vilification actually makes me more disciplined. It makes me understand that it's the idea of writing a great book that propels me now, whereas it used to be the idea of success.

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

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

A ten- or twelve-page story seems too easy, which is a funny thing to say considering that writing a decent short story is devastatingly difficult. Yet it still seems easier than a novel. You can turn a short story on a single good line - ten pages of decent writing and one good moment.

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

I still don't know whether I know how to write a sentence.

I think one of the battles for fiction writers is how much to invent or exaggerate.

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.