In my own little way, I feel like I'm part of a group of writers who care deeply about pushing the essay forward.

To me, the moment you're talking about nonfiction you're talking about reality.

Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things.

With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot.

The novel is dead. Long live the antinovel, built from scraps.

A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it.

Anything processed by memory is fiction.

Genre is a minimum security prison.

Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings. Take a source, extract what appeals to you, discard the rest. Such an act of editorship is bound to reflect something of the individual doing the editing: a plaster cast of an aesthetic-not the actual thing, but the imprint of it.

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.

I'm not interested in collage as the refuge of the composition-ally disabled. I'm interested in collage as (to be honest) an evolution beyond narrative.

If I'm reading a book and it seems truly interesting, I tend to start reading back to front in order not to be too deeply under the sway of progress.