"We can use strategies derived from what we know about narrative to give our non-narrative essays more resonance."

"It is this heart we need for our own writing—one that moves to understand and expresses a deep connection to life, which is also what I take essayist to mean." 

"We're taught that an essay is a document that proves or answers.  I go back to the word's Latin root, which means 'to try.'  Not 'to give an answer,' but 'to try.'  Sometimes an essay offers an answer, but asking questions is just as important.  A good essay promotes conversation."

"As we read [essays], we participate in the writer's attempt to find what he or she didn't know when first coming to the page."

"Much like the mind of its maker or of any human being, the essay is mutable and free flowing, wandering and multifaceted, and surprising in the connections it makes.  These surprises cause the reader to feel as if she is inside the mind of the writer, following his thoughts as they spin and swivel, pivot and progress.  Its nature is personal, born of individual emotions, reasoning, and affectations that give it heart and humanity.  Essays, whether we oblige or not, welcome us into their arms."

"Call it whatever you like—spirit, soul, psyche, personality, ego, unified field, inner being.  It is somewhere intangible, not physical, from whence these creations come.  Yet, by being put down on paper—letters into words, words into paragraphs, paragraphs into an essay—they join the physical realm."

"The world I see is not the world you see, mine is in me and yours is in you.  Essays are a way to reconcile these individual realities, to have my world meet yourself by taking an external experience or internal perception and reaching toward a universal meaning."

"Questioning is key to essay writing—it's usually what gets the piece moving."

Zen in the Art of Writing

The View from the Cheap Seats

Why Work?