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The point of essays is the point of writing anything. It's not to tell people what they already think or to give them more of what they already believe; it's to challenge people, and it's to suggest alternate ways of thinking about things.

I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing.

The essays are different because ultimately it's things I'm interested in, and I'm really just writing about myself and using those subjects as a prism.

The essay is one of my favourite forms of writing, and I feel like what's inside is really personal, more so than with shorter pieces.

An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play.

What I think is important about essayists - about the essay, as opposed to a lot of personal writing that kind of finds its way into public view - is that the material really has to be presented in a processed way.

The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

I love the essay. It's my favorite genre to work in.

I don't like writing essays or theory.

I love essays, but they're not always the best way to communicate to a larger audience.