Ethan Canin quotes:

I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much...people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov ...

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.

Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.

You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.

Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.

I think fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition.

Art is so personal. I'm very comforted by the fact that certain movies that I love, other people hate. Certain books that I love, other people hate. You can't please everybody.

If someone doesn't like your fiction, it's really insulting.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

To have too much time is not good, you have to force yourself. And human beings aren't meant for true freedom. I've learned that, having had it.

You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die.

There are writers who draw immediate attention to the fact that it's fiction. And I like some of that, but it doesn't really have the power...

I work with wood a lot. I like building. I think of building. I would love to buy land on some water somewhere and build a house. That'd be nice.