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

I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair.

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

Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about.

For a while I just couldn't imagine that there was a place for me in nonfiction. I looked around at what we were calling nonfiction and I thought, "Maybe you do have to go to poetry in order to do this other weird thing in nonfiction."

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