I could say that in the essay, as it has developed historically, success is determined by the writer's ability to express, through an individual voice, a collective experience - you are speaking individually but you are representing collectively.

Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life. The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.

I was always a reader. In the fifth grade, I got some sort of prize for having read hundreds of books from the library.

Technology is transforming everything. Who knows what it's doing, we don't really understand it.

I see myself only sporadically as a teacher and consistently as a writer. Teaching is how I pay the bills...and fortunately, for my students, I can intellectualize about writing, and I can talk about it well, and I like to talk about it.

I resist thinking of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a writer who has pulled a fast one and hoodwinked this institution into giving me a job and health insurance.

The sun does what it does because the earth tilts.