I never really understood the idea that nonfiction ought to be this dispensary of data that we have at the moment. Also, roughly around the time we were doing this fact-checking. And I never really understood why people think what nonfiction's job is to give them information as opposed to something else.

In some ways we want definitions that can help protect our own interpretations of the genre.

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

The whole movement of an essay is propelled by a fundamentally human impulse to want to figure things out.

I never really understood the idea that nonfiction ought to be this dispensary of data that we have at the moment. Also, roughly around the time we were doing this fact-checking. And I never really understood why people think what nonfiction's job is to give them information as opposed to something else.

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.

I look for the kind of text that doesn't look like the writer I'm considering. Plutarch is a great example.