Ethan Canin Quotes

When I write, I try to become different characters.

I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing.

I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.

Sometimes you can just step into the character, and you get all your feelings and emotions just from sympathizing with her and being her. But then, other times, you just have to resort back to anything that you've been through in your own life and try to play that.

If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.

I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal.

I think in a lot of ways, writing, when you're really in there, is like being an actress because you're in somebody else's head.

As a writer, it is always fun to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes.

That's why I enjoy acting: getting in the mind of someone else.

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

That balance between involvement and detachment is what novelists do. It's the ideal relationship between a novelist and a character, I think, total involvement and identity and empathy, stopping short of being autobiographical - in my case, anyway - but also quite detached.

When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes.

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

It's great fun if you get a good piece of writing and you can pretend to be someone else, tell a story that needs to be told, make some kind of connection. I've always fancied myself as a leading man, but I really doubt whether anyone else sees me that way.

I put a lot of myself into my characters when I write.

I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.

You can't judge a character that you're playing, because then you're fighting against doing what the character's doing.

To play a character is to inhabit the world and the life of that character.

Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally.

I try to construct some kind of backstory for my character so that I have an idea of the life of that character - not just from the moment when the scene starts, but from before.

I liken every character that I do to a relationship that you're in.

To write convincingly, I think you must be able to relate, in some way, to what a character is experiencing.