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 Read Quote
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. Ethan Canin Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Ethan Canin Read Quote
The only successful way to write, and the only one I have found, is to be the character. Give up on trying to control them. Writers always talk about hearing voices. That’s what they mean. Ethan Canin Read Quote
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?’ Ethan Canin Read Quote
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 Read Quote
