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Dan Chaon Biography

Dan Chaon is an American writer. He is the author of three short story collections and three novels, including Among the Missing, which was a 2001 finalist for the National Book Award. Chaon's stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthologies, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing and Literature.

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Dan Chaon Quotes

I've always been a horror movie fan, since I was a kid. And I was also a really scared kid. I was easily scared of the dark. One of the ways I would try and get away from my fear of the dark was to pretend like the monsters were my friends.

Away, Dark, Fear, Kids, Trying, Ways

I've had a lot of different lives. I was adopted, I grew up in Nebraska, and then I went to Northwestern. . . Then I had this really extraordinary, different life than my parents.

Different, Grew, Lives, Nebraska, Parent, Parents

Maybe it's because I grew up during the MTV generation, but to me a perfect song is one I can imagine a music video to, a song that can take you into a dream.

Dream, Grew, Mtv, Song, Take

I also have just my own limits about stuff. I'm not interested in writing graphically about sexual assault for example. I feel like the stuff that I'm fascinated by is the stuff that's part of the public imagination of what horror is. The bleakness is a different issue. I think that just stems from my personality. I wish that I offered a little more glimmer of hope sometimes.

Imagination, Part, Personality, Thinking, Writing

Maybe love, like suffering, is relative.

Like, Maybe, Maybe Love, Relative, Suffering

For the last few years I've tried to force myself to write at least one page every day, which doesn't sound like much but it's actually pretty hard to manage. Because I'm not allowed to do a make-up day. I can't do two pages the next day. The punishment for not completing my page is that I have to eat a vegetarian meal the next day.

Eat, Force, Punishment, Tried, Writing, Years

There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about yourself. Your connection to your former life is like a dream or delirium, and that person who you once were is merely a fond acquaintance, or a beloved character from a storybook. This is how memory becomes nostalgia. They are two very different things - the same way that a person is different from a photograph of a person.

Becomes, Connection, Dream, Love, Memories, Memory

A lot of people work really diligently to maintain a "profile" in the writing world, but that's so hard, and so boring most of the time. So you just keep doing what you like to do, I guess, and try to enjoy it.

Maintain, People, Profile, Trying, Work, Writing

The kind of person I find myself interested in is a cross between being very emotionally complex and very immature. That's what I felt I was like when I was younger.

Crosses, Immature, Kind, Like, Person

The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids.

Happiest, Kids, Led, My Wife, Wife

Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.

Dark, Finding, Light, Room, Writing

I still think about the writers I loved when I was a kid.

Kids, Loved, Stills, Think, Thinking, Writers

When I was younger I was attracted to people who had that kind of artifice - people who were incredibly polished and had a complex persona that always seemed to be turned on. I was really interested in these kinds of people because I felt so unformed.

Artifice, Complex, Kind, People, Persona

I guess I'm curious about how people process grief and how they process loss. And I'm also interested in the ways in which an event can have long-reaching consequences and a life over the course of years.

Grief, Interested, Life, Loss, Years

You can't count on notoriety lasting very long, and there's no way to predict whether anyone will care about your books or you in three years, let alone ten or twenty.

Book, Care, Long, Twenty, Way, Years

There are all kinds of strange threads in American culture, and places where sympathy is extended and places where it isn't, and places where outrage is extended and places where it's not. It's this constantly shifting barrel of eels.

Culture, Kind, Outrage, Strange, Sympathy, Threads

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

Mystery, Naturally, Say, Short Story, Stories

Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work.

Block, Plot, Scene, Think, Thinking, Work

A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.

Certain, Kind, See, Sense, Stories, World

If no one knows you, then you are no one.

Ifs, Knows

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