The whole movement of an essay is propelled by a fundamentally human impulse to want to figure things out.

Inclusiveness isn't what I want to push back against. The obsession with facts is.

Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about.

In some ways we want definitions that can help protect our own interpretations of the genre.

An essay is something that tracks the evolution of a human mind.

I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

What I didn't realize when I was in school and what I suspect a lot of young writers today don't get either is that you have to create the world that you want to exist in as an artist.

Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change.

I know it sounds silly, but disrespecting a dead writer by sitting in a chair that probably never belonged to him still felt like a risk to me. So I chickened out.

I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the time. That's why I joined the poetry program in grad school.

A risk is something that feels risky to the person who's taking it.

Never let your fears hold you back. Fears are not easily overcome but when you take the time to be brave it is worth the struggle.

And they all have pretty children, And the children go to school, And the children go to summer camp, And then to the university, Where they are put in boxesAnd they come out all the same.

If you ask me what I came to do in this world I an artist I will answer you: T am here to live out loud.'

We know but little of true Christianity, if we don't feel a deep concern about the souls of unconverted people.

Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plough is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is sequel of the bitter frost; a sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter.

Making fun of anyone's size, height, scarring, anything like that equals dumb.

To really understand something you've got to reduce it to its principles.

Hollywood is tripping over its own feet.

If I had any talent God could give me, I would be a great diva.

How do I dance with the fear? Fear is not the enemy. Paralysis is the enemy.