Most good essays are conversations with yourself - not just your decided thoughts but your dilemmas.
Phillip LopateFor most of my life, I have wanted broad impact but now, at 72, I'm not so sure that's always my first priority.
Phillip LopateDomesticity has been a challenge for me but painful as it's been, engaging with family has been a school for reducing solipsism and increasing my understanding of people's different reactions to stress.
Phillip LopateI imagined a psychic pain growing inside him (myself) that demanded some physical outlet. Suicide must have been his attempt to give Pain a body, a representation, to put it outside himself. A need to convert inner torment into some outward tangible wound that all could see. It was almost as though suicide were a last-ditch effort at exorcism, in which the person sacrificed his life in order that the devil inside might die.
Phillip Lopate