Sometimes I do feel exposed. I have this kind of theory about different channels or levels of relaying experience - when I tell someone, one on one, in a personal context, about something that's happened to me - that has a very different valence, a different charge, than when/if I've said it in a public forum.

Empathy is cloaked in our actions - as in, we might be experiencing empathy but not realize it's empathy.

We think we should have to work in order to feel. We want to have our cake resist us; and then we want to eat it, too.

When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say 'all kinds,' but really I mean I don’t write any kind at all: I’m trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.

Learning the edges or limits or sources of friction in empathy was one of the big issues for me.

In my own life as a reader I experience real moments of alienation when a writer feels too perfect, or like even the flaws they are admitting are somehow noble, or dysfunctional in an overly edgy, aesthetically pleasing way.

I'm happy not knowing. Most of the time (except when I'm a neurotic mess about uncertainty) I feel glad that the horizon is a mystery.