Quote

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

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Dan Chaon
Age: 60
Novelist
Writer
Sidney
Nebraska
Kind
Shifting
Sympathy
Kinds
Constantly
Eels
Places
Threads
Strange
Barrel
American
Extended
Culture
Outrage

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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.
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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.
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I have to admit that 'Psychology Today' was one of the first magazines I started reading, back when I was 13 or 14, because I was the kind of kid that was curious about the mysterious human mind - I hoped to learn about telekenisis, multiple personalities, psychosis, and various other cool and terrible things that happened inside people's heads.
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I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love.
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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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I guess I'm curious about how people process grief and how they process loss. And I'm also interested in the ways in which an event can have long-reaching consequences and a life over the course of years.
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The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids.
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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 would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.
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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 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.
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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.
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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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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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Sometimes he thinks that if he could only trace the path of his life carefully enough, everything would become clear. The ways that he screwed up would make sense. He closes his eyes tightly. His life wasn't always a mistake, he thinks, and he breathes uncertainly for awhile, trying to find a pathway into unconsciousness, into sleep.
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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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A lot of time, with stories, I'll start out with a title and try to dream myself into the story that it evokes - a kind of subconscious exercise in which I'm trawling for some kind of entryway into fiction.
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I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from the scene I find the character, from the character I find the larger plot. It's like deductive reasoning - I start with the smaller stuff and work backward.
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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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Plot was always secondary in my mind.
Dan Chaon