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

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.

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.

What is at the base of shame or guilt? It is the consciousness of an imbalance, or of an action in the past that has caused, and probably continues to cause, suffering.

Faith is blossom garden.

They were smart enough to know that handing out superpowers like sweets to the general public was never going to be a good idea.Not that that stopped it from happening anyway.

I love tiny, plastic realistic food magnets. I don't know why. They're hilarious.

Writing gave me a second chance - not to change things, but to savor them. That is a great gift.

My palate is simpler than it used to be. A young chef adds and adds and adds to the plate. As you get older, you start to take away.

I believe that adversity and negativity can be an amazing fuel towards personal success.

You have to know exactly what you want out of your career. If you want to be a star, you don't bother with other things.

We've been running a little behind schedule. But only by about 15 years or so.

The gift you offer another person is just your being.