Genre is a minimum security prison.

Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings. Take a source, extract what appeals to you, discard the rest. Such an act of editorship is bound to reflect something of the individual doing the editing: a plaster cast of an aesthetic-not the actual thing, but the imprint of it.

Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

Nonfiction, qua label, is nothing more or less than a very flexible (easily breakable) frame that allows you to pull the thing away from narrative and toward contemplation, which is all I've ever wanted.

Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.

The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as art".

In my own little way, I feel like I'm part of a group of writers who care deeply about pushing the essay forward.