Dan Chaon Quotes

I've always found it difficult to start with a definite idea, but if I start with a pond that's being drained because of a diesel fuel leak and a cow named Hortense and some blackbirds flying over and a woman in the distance waving, then I might get somewhere.

If what I see in my mind excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph.

The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.

I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content - kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on.

If I knew where creativity came from, I'd probably be a lot less stressed about coming up with new stories.

Well, I have an idea, usually a visual image of some sort. A setting. A particular, I don't know, urban scene, a particular time of day. Something that grips my imagination for some reason.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

My works really begin in a very simple way. Sometimes it's an image, and sometimes it's words I might write, like a fragment of a poem.

I've dedicated a lot of my life as a writer to understanding how to hear the divine voice, or the music of the spheres, or whatever it is that we do when we're making art, making something out of nothing. Figuring out how to do that is much more important than knowing how to execute a good line. I don't think about that anymore, I just write.

When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"

If I don't see a music video to it while writing it, I just scrap it immediately. It's very visual.

I don't base my books on my life (thank goodness) and I don't pick the topic first. In fact, the topic picks me - via a question I can't answer as a mom, a wife, a woman, an American. I find myself wondering "What if..." and it blossoms into a whole novel.

When I start writing, the first line might come from reality, but the second and the third one, I have to write it. So this is the genesis of my creation. If I want to know what happens, if I want to find out the secret, I have to write it.

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

I'll usually see a scene in my head, playing like a movie trailer. After I've written that scene, everything takes off from there.

When I'm creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.

Art is something you can't teach, but you can inspire it.

I get inspired at different times and in different ways.

You don't get inspiration sitting at a drawing board or in front of your computer.

My painting does not come from the easel.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.

I cannot live without art: it excites me, it challenges me, and it leads me to the next thing.

A lot of things trigger my inspiration. It can be the most banal things.

When you're an actor or any kind of artist, you use your life as something to draw from in every experience.