Quote

There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it's hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years?

Dan Chaon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dan Chaon
Age: 60
Novelist
Writer
Sidney
Nebraska
Tell
Trail
Become
Trails
Body
Teens
Many
Abandon
Hard
Versions
Years
Bodies
People
Twenties
Leave

More quotes by Dan Chaon

Image
I read a lot, but at the same time I'm not a particularly good or diligent or discriminating reader. I go through maybe close to a thousand or more books a year, but a lot of times I'll only read bits and pieces of any one individual text.
Dan Chaon
Image
A lot of times in my short fiction there isn't much dramatized scene - there are a lot of short, interconnected bits, snippets of conversation, continual action, and so on. I frequently rely pretty heavily on voice.
Dan Chaon
Image
I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love.
Dan Chaon
Image
So this was what it felt like to lose yourself. Again. To let go of your future and let it rise up and up until finally you couldn't see it anymore, and you knew that you had to start over.
Dan Chaon
Image
The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids.
Dan Chaon
Image
I don't think anybody deals well with tragedy or grief, but maybe my characters are particularly bad at it. Which is why I love them.
Dan Chaon
Image
Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.
Dan Chaon
Image
You know, the biggest indicator of where you live is your income. If you live in this suburb you make this much money, and if you live in that suburb, you make that much money, and if you don't have any money you live where you're allowed to live.
Dan Chaon
Image
The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.
Dan Chaon
Image
The kind of person I find myself interested in is a cross between being very emotionally complex and very immature. That's what I felt I was like when I was younger.
Dan Chaon
Image
When I was younger I was attracted to people who had that kind of artifice - people who were incredibly polished and had a complex persona that always seemed to be turned on. I was really interested in these kinds of people because I felt so unformed.
Dan Chaon
Image
Fiction is fun because you get to steal an identity and try to make it authentic.
Dan Chaon
Image
It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.
Dan Chaon
Image
The earliest impetuses for writing, for me, were simply the strange things I happened to notice in my everyday life, stuff I read about in the grocery store tabloids my mom bought, situations that struck me as compelling, anecdotes I'd heard, images, words, metaphors.
Dan Chaon
Image
Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.
Dan Chaon
Image
At a certain point, you must be able to slip loose. At a certain point, you found that you had been set free. You could be anyone, he thought. You could be anyone.
Dan Chaon
Image
The feeling of being an outsider, and the identity theme, are hardwired into me. If there's anything really autobiographical in my fiction, it's that feeling. I always feel that way.
Dan Chaon
Image
You can't tell people how to feel when they read your work. You can only hope to connect.
Dan Chaon
Image
Identity issues are hardwired into the way I think about character - it's almost as if I can't get away from them even if I want to.
Dan Chaon
Image
Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong.
Dan Chaon