A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.

— Dan Chaon

Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future.

— Dan Chaon

He had built his own future brick by brick around himself, but there were no doors or windows, at least that was the way it seemed at the time he had thought to himself, I am locked in, it was like one of those ghost stories where you wake up, and you are sealed in a coffin.

— Dan Chaon

Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.

— Dan Chaon

Hesitantly, I touched the stump where my finger used to be. In my mind, something almost remembered itself, but the fumes of turpentine were making me a little lightheaded; whatever memory was on the verge of coughing itself up was gone even before it materialized. Out the window, I could see a squirrel was stumbling erratically around in circles underneath the old basketball net. Then I realized that it wasn't a squirrel; it was a brown paper bag.

— Dan Chaon

I can't understand how people can settle for having just one life. I remember we were in English class, and we were talking about that poem by - that one guy. David Frost. 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood-' You know this poem, right? 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth-""I loved that poem. But I remember thinking to myself: Why? How come you can't travel both? That seemed really unfair to me.

— Dan Chaon

I guess I always thought it would be bigger, when a terrible thing happened. Didn't you think so? Doesn't it seem like houses ought to be caving in, and lightning and thunder, and people tearing their hair in the street? I never - I never thought it would be this small, did you?

— Dan Chaon

I guess," says Eagle, finally, "I'll just have a pack of Marlboro Lights. That's what I used to smoke when I was human.

— Dan Chaon

I never understood why people from the 1980s thought there would be flying cars. It just seemed really dangerous and impractical to me, but they all talked about it, so it must have been a thing. Meanwhile, my dream for the future was that it wouldn't involve mass extinction and large-scale water shortages and cannibalism.

— Dan Chaon

I realized that I had the choice. I could give this moment a meaning, or I could choose to ignore it. It just depended on the kind of story I wanted to tell myself.

— Dan Chaon