Our culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any.

I don’t know what’s the matter with me, why I’m so adept at distance, why I feel so remote from things, why life feels like a rumor.

I'm wonderfully self-lacerating, probably to my character's detriment. I'm terribly open to critique.

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

You're one of 6.5 billion people now on the planet, and 99.9 percent of your genes are the same as everyone else's.

A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it.

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.