Quote

I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love.

Dan Chaon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dan Chaon
Age: 60
Novelist
Writer
Sidney
Nebraska
Writing
Way
Always
Love
Teachers
Think
Gave
Thinking
Early
Teacher
Ways

More quotes by 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
You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn't. I'm becoming much more aware of that after reading a decade of student stories.
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
Image
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
Image
My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died.
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
There are all kinds of strange threads in American culture, and places where sympathy is extended and places where it isn't, and places where outrage is extended and places where it's not. It's this constantly shifting barrel of eels.
Dan Chaon
Image
You can't count on notoriety lasting very long, and there's no way to predict whether anyone will care about your books or you in three years, let alone ten or twenty.
Dan Chaon
Image
In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.
Dan Chaon
Image
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.
Dan Chaon
Image
The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids.
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
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
I love to write when I feel like everybody else is asleep and when I feel like the world is kind of empty in some ways. I find, oddly enough, that I write about loneliness and isolation a lot.
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 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
I guess I've been blessed with insomnia because I do a lot of my writing at night. Because I don't sleep as much as I probably should, I have that extra time to write weird stories and think odd thoughts.
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
One of the things I rarely do is write about sex.
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