A Quote by Ethan Canin

Medicine involves dealing with people who are going through changes and cycles, often people trapped in bodies that are going out from under them. Spending time with them lets you think their way, gives you insights as a writer.
Fundamentally, as human beings, we're very, very alike and a lot more alike than we think, but we have a tendency to divide the world into them and us. In prison, when people commit a crime and we put them away, they definitely become "them." We don't want to deal with it because they have chosen to step out of society, so we're going to keep them out. Even if they serve their time, we're going to make sure that, for the rest of their lives, they're going to be branded. I don't know how to do it in a different way, but I think it clearly doesn't work.
Bipolar disorder is so swept under the rug as a nation and, I think especially, by black people. It's not our culture to go get therapy. 'Give them medicine for what?' We put people in court, put them in court again, versus really paying attention to what it is they are going through.
I think there are going to be some social changes that take place due to the Internet, and the availability of the tools to more and more people. I think you are going to find a lot of people re-cutting movies and changing them, making them into their own movies.
Every time you do something, people are going to like it, people are going to hate it. You tend to make the movies on the basis you are making them for the people who are going to like them and not worrying too much about people who don't like them.
I think bullying comes from a person's feeling of self-worth, and so what you do is you find out where you are in a totem pole, and you may slide in somewhere in the middle. So you say, "OK, well there's all these other people who I respect and admire, and there's all these people below me, so I'm going to put on them this sense that they're inferior and I'm going to belittle them, and that's going to raise my stature."
When I write a book, I put everything I have into it; so the more I have, the more the books become. Some people get freaked out by them: mostly the people who believe, mistakenly, that fantasy is about escaping reality. To them I say: If you have a problem with reality, you should be spending more time dealing with your life, and less time reading popcorn fantasy.
I'm their biggest fan every Sunday they go out there and play. I'm pulling for them, for the people in New Orleans and everything they're going through. If there are three or four hours that people can get away from the reality that is existing for them right now, the uncertainty, the unknown, the Saints can bring a sense of pride to them for that short period of time.
If you're going to have a kid who engages in critical thinking, you're not going to shut them down when they ask a question. You're not going to settle for "because." You're going to encourage them to ask more. And you want them to understand how other people think.
People treat serious subjects so seriously, which is so obvious a way of dealing with them. I'm always thinking that the best way of dealing with them is to show people as human beings.
I think some of the funniest and most artistic people I know are the ones who had a hard time at school. They often have humility and artistry. So, as much as I feel bad for kids who have to go through a rough childhood, I believe that if they can turn it around, it's going to make them better people later on.
Every time the liberals pass a bill - I don't care what it involves - they stick criminal sanctions on it. They don't feel there is any way people are going to keep a law unless they can put them in jail.
I think we're all sensitive; everyone has a certain way about themselves that people don't like to let their emotions out too often. I think people tend to suppress them and hold them in, so I think there's a bit of that in me.
People habituate themselves to let things pass through their minds, as one may speak, rather than to think of them. Thus by use they become satisfied merely with seeing what is said, without going any further. Review and attention, and even forming a judgment, becomes fatigue; and to lay anything before them that requires it, is putting them quite out of their way.
I think that it drives from an emotional connection with everybody that pulls you through all of those events, whether it's the events or what would be more the action, or I guess the visual effects side of it. So it always starts with me from - emotionally - 'Why do you care about the people who are going through what they're going through?' Because it takes a hell of a lot to put them through that. So you better care for them when they're doing it.
One of the great weaknesses of journalists is they interview people and they think that's important. They think that they are going to show them their true hand. But more to the point, they're trapped.
You gotta make a change. Its time for us as a people to start making some changes, lets change the way we eat, lets change the way we live, and lets change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so its on us, to do what we gotta do to survive.
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