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" John Cheever was the first writer I ever read who sort of had that similar sensation that, you know, life is nasty, miserable, brutish and short, but that occasionally, there's a certain river of light, a kind word, a telling gesture that sort of illuminates something. "

Ethan Canin

Know

Life

Light

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" I've discovered over the years that being subject to both the adoration and the vilification actually makes me more disciplined. It makes me understand that it's the idea of writing a great book that propels me now, whereas it used to be the idea of success. "

Ethan Canin

Writing

Success

" I no longer practice medicine, but I can say that, for me, medicine was easier - and certainly less emotionally turbulent - than writing. "

Ethan Canin

Medicine

Practice

" I like certain people's work better than my own. "

Ethan Canin

Own

My Own

" It used to be you sat up in your attic and wrote and went down to a local cafe and talked with people there. "

Ethan Canin

Cafe

Used

" I'm a craftsman type of teacher. I don't like the thematic type of teaching that takes place in a lot of colleges. "

Ethan Canin

Teacher

Place

" In medicine, there's a fairly large but still finite body of knowledge that you need at hand for most of your daily work. It takes a few years to learn it, but once it's there, it's there. With writing, on the other hand, every new book - indeed, every new story - is a fresh and terrifying reinvention of everything. "

" In the winter, I read next to a wood-burning stove. In the summer, we have a place up in Michigan where I like to read in a hammock. It's almost entirely hidden by cedar trees and right up by the water. You can climb in there and see nothing but water and be seen by nobody. It's perfect. "

" You have to look at the value of different kinds of words. Adjectives weaken, and adverbs come even farther down the line. Verbs are strong; verbs and nouns. "

" Books were king, but now movies are king, and books are sort of ignored. So now there's no sense of a welcoming community where you live. "

" I was never writing for commercial success. It's nice that it has come, but it is not important. "