I feel that I'm an essayist and that my best work gets done in that form. I wanted to do a book where the essays could exist on their own terms. A book that was neither a book of essays that were shoehorned into a memoir, nor [one where] the essays had been published elsewhere first, [because] then they would kind of bear the marks of those publications.
What I think is important about essayists, about the essay as opposed to a lot of personal writing is that the material has to be presented in a processed way. I'm just not interested in writing, "Hey, this is what happened to me today." You get to a place that has very little to do with your personal experience and talks about some larger idea or something in the culture. I don't think you can get to that unless you have had a lot of time to gestate and maybe if I was taking a lot of notes while stuff was going on, I wouldn't be able to get to that place as easily.
For me, one of the reasons I love this form - the personal essay form - is because it's a way of forming an intimacy with the reader. What I'm saying to the reader is: I'm going to tell you something; I'm going to be generous; I'm going to offer. The confession, on the other hand, is sort of an imposition because you're asking the reader to forgive you or somehow exonerate you or say, "Hey, I'm even worse." But what I'm interested in doing is being generous and offering a perspective or suggesting a way of thinking about something.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: