Ethan Canin Quotes

I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

I am gennerally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc.

Now every time I start to put a word on paper, I’ll wonder whether it’s an expensive $10 word, or a little, unimportant word like ‘is’ or ‘and’ that only costs $1.75.

I enjoy finding the right word and giving each its full measure, its full space in a sentence.

I ain't no author, man... my writing skills are not of 'New York Times' best-seller quality, trust and believe it ain't. My vocabulary ain't.

You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

Mark Twain said, 'The right word is to the nearly right word as lightning is to the lightning bug.' Fill your book with lightning.

I like all things grammatical, and I had already written several books about parts of speech, and even the alphabet, so everything that makes up a sentence and even a word was covered except for punctuation.

I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns.

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school!

I'm a 'frotteur,' someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader's hair frizzy. There's a question of pacing.

Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them.

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.

Every sentence stands on its own. Whether that's fair or not, that's kind of the way it is.

I'm a language-oriented writer who proceeds sentence by sentence.

A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.

I have to admit that I'm not very good with grammar. They taught grammar in elementary and high school, but I went to public schools, so I never really learned it.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.