If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
Plutarch's peers were writing "rhetorics," which were these dry philosophical treatises that made really broad gestures about life and death and fate.… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
I like Plutarch because I've read him forever, and I know that he's incredibly funky, even though his mainstream image is as… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
The intimate and meditative form that Plutarch became known for was completely new in his day. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
People like to say that Plutarch's is a really "personal" voice, but in truth Plutarch tells us very little about his life.… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
Inclusiveness isn't what I want to push back against. The obsession with facts is. — John D'Agata Copy Share
Yet there are some critics in the nonfiction world who still look at some of today's stranger interpretations of the essay and say "You… — John D'Agata Copy Share
I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art. — John D'Agata Copy Share
As frustrating as my time in grad school felt, it also helped tremendously because it challenged me to figure out what it was I… — John D'Agata Copy Share
I'm not worried about what part of their life they needed to massage in order to achieve something that I get to experience as… — John D'Agata Copy Share
You create your own audience, and your own community of peers, and in some ways you create your own forebears as well. — John D'Agata Copy Share
Even if it's a definition that feels oppressive to us, that oppression can be inspiring because it helps us push up against something while… — John D'Agata Copy Share
I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the… — John D'Agata Copy Share
You move your life across the country and make a commitment to a place, and to a genre, and then you realize that neither… — John D'Agata Copy Share
Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about. — John D'Agata Copy Share
“Maybe every essay automatically is in some way experimental — less an outline traveling toward a foregone conclusion than an unmapped quest that has… — John D'Agata Copy Share
I wanted to create an environment in which more than just personal essays could be represented, and in which stranger approaches to making essays… — John D'Agata Copy Share
Sometimes what I'm looking for is the thing that will help renew people's interest in a writer that they may have written off as… — John D'Agata Copy Share
