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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.
Dan Chaon
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Dan Chaon
Age: 60
Novelist
Writer
Sidney
Nebraska
Time
Point
Pushing
Think
Last
Roll
Thinking
Certain
Starts
Together
Thirds
Book
Rock
Come
Pressure
Develops
Long
Weight
Hill
Things
Start
Hills
More quotes by Dan Chaon
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
You can't tell people how to feel when they read your work. You can only hope to connect.
Dan Chaon
My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died.
Dan Chaon
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.
Dan Chaon
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.
Dan Chaon
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
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
Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong.
Dan Chaon
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
I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage.
Dan Chaon
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
It's not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn't. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way--a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved.
Dan Chaon
Fiction is fun because you get to steal an identity and try to make it authentic.
Dan Chaon
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
Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work.
Dan Chaon
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.
Dan Chaon
I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love.
Dan Chaon
In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.
Dan Chaon
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
The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids.
Dan Chaon
