A Quote by Dan Chaon

I love to write when I feel like everybody else is asleep and when I feel like the world is kind of empty in some ways. I find, oddly enough, that I write about loneliness and isolation a lot.
I've never known a writer who didn't feel ill at ease in the world. We all feel unhoused in some sense. That's part of why we write. We feel we don't fit in, that this world is not our world, that though we may move in it, we're not of it. You don't need to write a novel if you feel at home in the world.
I like to write about things that are extreme in some form. I like to write about something I feel I have to write about.
But I love to write music. What I would love to do is give some of the songs I write to someone like Taylor Swift because I feel like she could sing them.
I just feel like there's something to be said about feeling comfortable with what you have and don't have. And - for instance, I don't think I'm particularly a great singer, but I feel like I write songs that complement my voice, you know, and I feel like it's unique. And I don't feel like I'm particularly a great actor, for instance, but I feel like I approach each thing that I do with some level of sensitivity. And I would say that comedy in general is the most disarming.
Believe me, I know what it's like to feel all alone...the worst kind of loneliness in the world is isolation that comes from being misunderstood, it can make people lose their grasp on reality. - Sienna Brooks
It's my experience that you first feel the impulse to write in your chest. It's like falling in love, only more so. It feels like something criminal. It feels like unspeakably wild sex. So, think: When you feel the overpowering need to go out and find some unspeakably wild sex, do you rush to tell your mom about it?
I feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.
Sometimes, when we're on tour, I'll find an empty room or a corner and I'll just sing. It heals something in me, be it some kind of isolation or loneliness. It's really quite beautiful that singing can do that.
I love making music. I feel like people often get into that 'you should only make music for yourself' kind of place, where they say things like, "I don't write for other people, I write for myself," and I feel like that misses the mark so much because music, especially pop music, is so much more than yourself.
I don't feel any ethical dilemma when I write. In my memoir, I was able to write with candor about the two most difficult people in the world to write with candor about - mom and dad. Everything else is downhill from there.
When I write, I normally write anywhere that I can feel at peace, so if it's in my bedroom, if it's at the park, if it's by a lake somewhere, wherever I feel calm is where I like to write.
We also write to heighten our own awareness of life... We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection... We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it...to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely... When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking... I feel I lose my fire and my color.
If you write, write about what you do and who you are, and you can't be wrong. Don't lie about anything. You are very similar to everybody else in the world. You love, you hate, you have friends, you have enemies. Be who you are.
I feel like the future is unwritten. So many of the things that we write now haven't been about educating people on the environment, they've been about disseminating facts. But I feel like it could be productive to write something that explored directly the idea of fragility.
There are no limitations with a song. To me a song is a little piece of art. It can be whatever you like it to be. You can write the simplest song, and that's lovely, or you can just write a song that is abstract art. ... A lot of my songs are very serious, I'm like dead serious about certain things and I feel that I'm writing about the world, through my own eyes. ... I have a love for simple basic song structure, although sometimes you'd never know it. ... Most of the songs I wrote at night. I would just wake in the middle of the night. That's when I found the space to write.
In some ways, her life is so much worse that everybody else's, people feel almost cheered up and inspired. They feel like, 'If Hayley hasn't killed herself, why should I?'
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