A Quote by Ethan Canin

If you try to write a novel in L.A., you're a chump; everyone is speeding by, and you're driving a rickshaw.

Ethan Canin

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Driving Everyone Novel Rickshaw Speeding Try Write

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Ethan Canin
American - Author
Born: July 19, 1960

The DNA of the novel - which, if I begin to write nonfiction, I will write about this - is that: the title of the novel is the whole novel. The first line of the novel is the whole novel. The point of view is the whole novel. Every subplot is the whole novel. The verb tense is the whole novel.

Mary Kay Zuravleff

It had that kind of open-ended fear to it - like that feeling you get when you're driving and you see a cop. And you're not speeding. You don't have drugs. But you're just thinking, I hope he doesn't notice I'm driving.

Mike Birbiglia

The rules seem to be these: If you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. But nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else.

James A. Michener

Speeding is like drugs. It makes everything come at you fast, and when you go back to normal driving, safe driving, prudent driving, it seems boring. That's the danger of drugs. At first it's intoxicating, but then the rest of your life you're trying to find that very first time. It never is the same.

Tim Allen

I would like to write a novel, or at least try to write one, although my motives are not entirely pure. For one thing, I get asked about writing novels so much that I feel guilty about never having written one. And although I have no strong desire to write a novel, I would hate not to try. That would just be silly. On the other hand, I hate the idea of slogging through something that turns out to be not good.

Kelly Link

If you're going to write, then write a novel with a Haitian woman in it and try and describe her accurately. When you can do that, you can write about people.

Jeff Buckley

I try not to write more than two or three, I try to just write one if possible, I write till the end at least a draft of a play or a novel; but sometimes, I'll take a break for a couple weeks for a project that is paying me money like a television project which I try to stay away from just to stay financially ahead of the game.

Adam Rapp

I'm not a total chump. I write stuff that's reasonably musically complex.

Tim Minchin

I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate students. It seems almost uncivilized to tell someone writing a novel, 'No, you have to call this a memoir.'

Elif Batuman

Don’t try to write a novel. Write short stories and then figure out how to connect them.

Ray Bradbury

Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.

Barbara Kingsolver

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.

Thomas Keneally

I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.

Flannery O'Connor

I've often thought I would like to try to write a conventional novel, but I just don't know enough about the real world to write one.

Jim Woodring

My driving record is not exemplary, but I have never had a speeding ticket over 100 m.p.h. I can say that unequivocally.

Carl Hiaasen

Let's say you are driving in the U.K., and you are pulled over by the police for speeding, and you try to bribe the police officer with £300 to walk away. I guarantee you that at least 99 times out of 100 you are going end up in handcuffs, and you will be charged with the crime of trying to bribe a police officer.

Bryan Fogel

A Quote by Ethan Canin

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