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

As a student at the time, I kind of felt like my only options as a nonfiction writer were to either jump on the personal essay bus or linger back at the station, hoping that some other heretofore unknown mode of transportation was going to magically show up to take me where I wanted to go.

I'm not worried about what part of their life they needed to massage in order to achieve something that I get to experience as transcendent. Because that's the point of literature, I think: to connect.

I like Plutarch because I've read him forever, and I know that he's incredibly funky, even though his mainstream image is as Mr. Unfunky.

In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my interpretation of the genre was always going to be a little off-kilter.

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

A risk is something that feels risky to the person who's taking it.