Contradictory strands create an essay that's richly ambivalent.

The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.

Hedonism can be a rational response to a difficult life.

The essay must be artistically rendered: You must keep the reader engaged, whether with wit, conflict, mischief, and/or yes, with honesty.

Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.

Most good essays are conversations with yourself - not just your decided thoughts but your dilemmas.

The trick is to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one’s example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.

A personal essay often includes some or a lot of personal confession. That makes the reader feel less lonely in their confusion and darkness.

Have fun writing, because it enhances both the writer's and reader's experience.

Confession makes you a more trustworthy narrator.

In new work, we need to see the shadow, however faint, of previous literary effort.

All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings there’s too much corruption in the world

But there is something about human beings that too often makes our love for the world look very much like hatred for it.

Democrats are so spineless, so afraid to go against the tide... but dissension is the greatest form of patriotism.

EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

Educated men and women, especially those who are in college, very often get the idea that religion is fit only for the common people. No young man or woman can make a greater error than this.

What other people think of you is not your business. If you start to make that business your business, you will be offended for the rest of your life.

During the great storms of our lives we imitate those captains who jettison their weightiest cargo.

Love grows by not giving to us. And if our passion for poetry lives on and persists, it is because poetry offers us only its bits of lint.

For sheer excitement you can keep movie premieres and roller-coasters . An empty white canvas waiting to be filled. That's the thing.

We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.