Historically, there are hierarchies of purity. Certain aspects of poetry are very, very pure. The lyric poem can't be anything but the lyric poem.

Society imposes an identity on you because of the way you look. Your struggle as a self has to do with an identity being imposed on you that you know is not your identity.

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.

All ideas about identity, of course, fit perfectly into the social media wonderland we live in. They seem to really connect. There's a science-fiction aspect to our contemporary life. What's virtual, what's real.

These new theories of the universe, that there are multiple universes just bubbling up constantly - it's all pretty wild.

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.

It's important for all writers to try to figure out what they're doing.