Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change.

It's fun to just skim through piles of books in the stacks of a library.

As frustrating as my time in grad school felt, it also helped tremendously because it challenged me to figure out what it was I thought I wanted.

Sometimes what I'm looking for is the thing that will help renew people's interest in a writer that they may have written off as not their kind of writer.

An essay is something that tracks the evolution of a human mind.

Of course it's possible for political essays to be artful. I just want to call into question the dominance of content over form in the history of the essay. I want us to recognize that there's art involved in making this stuff, because we still don't approach the constructed nature of the essay with the same appreciation that we do poetry or fiction.

The intimate and meditative form that Plutarch became known for was completely new in his day.