List of Dan Chaon Quotes

I Feel Like I Go Back And Forth Between Being Fairly Fatalistic And Really More Hopeful About The Possibilities Of Things Changing. And Will See How That Goes In This Election Cycle. That Will Probably Strongly Affect How Fatalistic I Am.

In Some Ways All Of My Fiction Is Like A Conversation I'm Having With The Writers I Read When I Was First Falling In Love With Books.

I Still Think About The Writers I Loved When I Was A Kid.

Maybe It's Because I Grew Up During The Mtv Generation, But To Me A Perfect Song Is One I Can Imagine A Music Video To, A Song That Can Take You Into A Dream.

I Know A Lot Of People Don't Listen To Music When They're Writing Because It Distracts Them, But For Me It's Almost A Way To Get Into The Self-hypnotic State That I Need To Be In To Write.

I Started Out As A Poet Who Primarily Wanted To Write About Image And Moment. Over The Years I've Been Trying To Teach Myself How To Do Plot And Scene. My First Story Collection Had The Most Issues With The Plotlessness, And When I Was Writing My Second Collection I Was Teaching Myself How To Make Things Happen.

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.

Plot And Scene Are Still The Hardest Things For Me, Though I Think They're The Building Blocks Of What Makes A Story Work.

I'd Read An Enormous Amount But Had Spent So Much Time In My Own Head That I Didn't Have Extensive Social Skills. Suddenly I Was In This World Where I Was Surrounded By These Incredibly Polished And Wealthy Kids Who Had Gone To Prep Schools, And I Felt Daunted By Them. I Don't Think People Were Aware Of How Full Of Anxiety I Was... For A Long Time I Felt Like I Was Living In A Place Where I Shouldn't Have Been.

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.

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.

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.