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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

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Dan Chaon
Age: 60
Novelist
Writer
Sidney
Nebraska
Kind
Complex
Like
Cross
Crosses
Interested
Felt
Immature
Persons
Emotionally
Person
Younger
Find
Complexes

More quotes by Dan Chaon

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My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died.
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I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.
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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.
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I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out.
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Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between writing the novels and sort of sneaking out to work on stories occasionally. These stories were written over the last 10 years or so, as I was taking breaks from the novels I've written.
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Fiction is fun because you get to steal an identity and try to make it authentic.
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I keep a daily journal of whatever weird thought comes into my mind, like when I had a dream I was in North Dakota in the middle of a blizzard and for some reason the Egyptian pyramids were there, too - that I was able to shuffle into the book.
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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.
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It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.
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I like to sleep about four or five really solid hours at night, and then sometimes take a nap in the afternoon or early evening after dinner. I love naps.
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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.
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I think at a certain point the book develops a certain weight, or pressure. You've been pushing the rock up the hill for a long time and then it starts to roll and things do start to come together in the last two thirds.
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Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong.
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That's how I work, whether with stories or novels - they start with an image that comes to me in a daydream, and a lot of times I'm walking around with these pictures in my head for awhile before I start writing.
Dan Chaon
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The danger in writing about a world you don't know very well is that you can get lost in it, and sometimes I'll end up with a hundred pages I don't know what to do with.
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I never could figure out how those people like Bukowski could be both carousers and writers at the same time, because to me writing takes as much destructive energy as it takes to be a really good professional drunk.
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I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life, but for me, the process of writing is really chaotic and decadent and indulgent.
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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.
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In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.
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You can't tell people how to feel when they read your work. You can only hope to connect.
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