The sun does what it does because the earth tilts.

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.

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

We all think of ourselves as our subjectivity, our consciousness.

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.

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

Genres have a history and impose a historical character upon the writer. What is interesting in the poem involves a certain kind of dramatization of the self that you don't have to engage in in the essay. In fact, the essay is a more social medium than the poem.