One of my favorite ways to find fictional inspiration, by the way, is to browse historical timelines. I also like world atlases - any country with a squiggly coastline seems to inspire me, as do visual dictionaries, those reclusive creatures of the reference shelf.

Ethan Canin

Ethan Canin

Also Any Browse Coastline Country Creatures Dictionaries Favorite Fictional Find Historical Inspiration Inspire Like Me Reclusive Reference Seems Shelf Those Visual Way Ways World

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Families tend to artificially divide the world, imbuing one member with all the attributes and another with all the faults. But it's never that way.

— Ethan Canin

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Doubt is the enemy of mania. It's trying to get aloft strung with weights. The moment I like writing is three sentences in, when somehow those weights drop away, and you can invent. I cannot tell you the dread I have.

— Ethan Canin

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I'm becoming more of a novelist as I get older. The novel just seems the truer form. There's less artifice involved.

— Ethan Canin

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The historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one's own imagination.

— Ethan Canin

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I like to write about the moment of light in the hour of darkness.

— Ethan Canin

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