Ethan Canin Quotes

When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces.

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.

I write just knowing that I enjoy writing. But if I have to write, it seems like nothing comes. But when I go there for my own pleasure, the Lord might just give me loads of stuff all at once.

I never feel more myself than when I'm writing; I never enjoy any day more than a good writing day.

But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.

The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.

Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination's curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too.

I don't want to compare myself to somebody like Fitzgerald or Hemingway, but I feel like, for some writers, going to a certain city, a certain place, is what kickstarts your imaginative process.

I got down to business and started writing furiously. I wore my fingers down to a callous state writing with every Tom, Dick and Harry around the world, including a chap named Charlie who plays for a man named Bob, to wrestle my emotions and bring out the raw grit hiding in my tightly guarded sub-conscious.

The writer's curse is that the more you fall in love with the work you're doing, the more I think it shows.

I love writing, and I love the solitude of the writing, in that you're just sitting there creating something from nothing, or a new story for characters you love and care about.

I just love language. I mean, I love it. I love stage directions. Any opportunity to write. I hadn't written in so long, I get very crazy and miserable. I - it's like not seeing my kids: I can't do it for very long.

The most amazing gift about being a novelist is that you get to pursue your curiosity every day.

Being a novelist, you can roam around with a story and indulge yourself.

When I get an idea, I start to write like I was electrically motivated.

One of the best parts of being a writer is getting to peer into other worlds - even if you aren't going to stay very long.

It's hard for me to feel bad when I'm writing well.

Fall into your sentences; enjoy writing them. Love the world you are creating.

The most joyful part of writing, for me, is when I am 90% there, and suddenly the story clicks into place, and things finally start to make sense.

When I'm writing something, everything falls into place. When I'm not writing, stuff keeps happening to me, and there's nowhere to put it all.

When you're a writer and you're an adult, that's something you crave - that limitless imagination and love for worlds that don't exist that you can create.

In the past, I was free to write in quiet and in the space wherever my desk was at. I could leave my instruments out. In the past, my writing was super private; I never liked showing my work at its earliest stages.

I don't really like to just sit down at a computer and write, because that tends to be a little forced.

What I found so captivating about the idea of being a writer was having the ability to write down all these things I made up in my head so other people could see them.

If I'm really excited about a scene, I used to wait to write it, and now I'll just write it. When you do that, all sorts of awesome things can happen from just giving in and writing that scene you're excited about.