The knowledge that my discriminations are skewed and not always universally desirable doesn't stop me in the least from making them.

Contradictory strands create an essay that's richly ambivalent.

In the best nonfiction, it seems to me, you're always made aware that you are being engaged with a supple mind at work. The story line or plot in nonfiction consists of the twists and turns of a thought process working itself out.

The knowledge that my discriminations are skewed and not always universally desirable doesn't stop me in the least from making them.

A personal essay often includes some or a lot of personal confession. That makes the reader feel less lonely in their confusion and darkness.

Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.

It bothers me when I can't, for example, remember a name. I don't know if it's pre-senility or whether there are too many names packed in our brains.