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 proc….

I think it started to feel like home when I stopped maintaining any pretense that I was ever going to be in the movie business. I went there like man….

As I've gotten older, I've felt I have more authority on that subject. I think the conversation needs to be reframed. What I hate - a lot of conversa….

I just am a person who loves houses. In a way, it's dovetailed into one of the themes of The Unspeakable: Why do you have to change? Why don't you ju….

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….

Being in the entertainment industry in L.A. is the equivalent to being in the publishing industry in New York. You don't ever have to hangout with an….

I started my professional career before the blogosphere existed in any sort of meaningful way. I think that my approach as a writer was certainly fre….

As soon as I accepted that I am this kind of writer and I happen to live here, and stopped going to meetings and stopped beating myself up because I ….

Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is wha….

The thing about living in a place like Nebraska is there aren't that many people, so your circle of acquaintances is going be much more diverse. Ever….

People who grew up before the blogosphere, I just think that your brain is wired differently. I feel like in some ways my sensibility is aligned with….

I grew up in a town where there were no adults over forty who weren't somebody's parents. It was, unfortunately, the kind of town that's a "great pla….

And why the hell should you do a really hard, important job that you don't want to do? That has extremely high stakes? That just blows my mind..

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 bo….

I had written a lot about my dog dying before. I wrote a newspaper column about it and it turned out to be the most popular column I'd ever written. ….

I mean, being provincial is a privilege in a way. Also people in New York think everybody interacts because they all take the subway. "Oh, I see all ….

New York is such a special place. It's really intense for people because they live here when they're young. On top of the energy of the city there's ….

We've never been in a time where mothers - parenthood, but particularly motherhood - is so fetishized..

I've always been interested in tht notion of what is authentic and how we define that and why our culture imposes certain emotions and emotional cons….

I don't keep a diary or a journal. Sometimes I'll send emails to friends and that's a way of recording what I was thinking at any given time. But I'v….

What amazes me is when I see people in their twenties who have families or live a life that seems of a much older person. But that's such a demograph….