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.

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.

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.

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

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.

With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot.