My sweet spot as a writer and, especially, as an essayist…

Special qualities are required of the essayist. A poem or a novel may spring from the inner consciousness of an author. Reasoning poers must…

— Flora Thompson

“Each of us, along with our ancestors, inhabits the same cosmos. When we tell stories, we enter the stream of human consciousness; we take…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“The American essayist William Deresiewicz wrote that “no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or moral, can arise without solitude.”

— Michael Finkel

“Writing is a pitched battle with the elusive self, a contest that resultant celebratory jubilee demonstrates the writer’s innate capacity to meld abstract ideas…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“The writer’s obsessions are twofold. First, communicate their thoughts onto paper with a great degree of precision in order accurately to express everything that…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“A writer is not born but made through study and sheer willpower and ability to embrace beauty and agony.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“The quality of any author’s effort at personal writing and thematic commentary hinges upon the author’s intrinsic limitations, personal vantage point, and personal capacity…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

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

Essayists must not only be succinct but have original ideas and, even harder to come by, or to fake, likable voices. Consciously or not,…

— Cyra McFadden

“Memory and imagination allow us to enter the womb of creation, devise the lens through which we translate our surroundings, and create the spectrum…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“Personal essay writing is analogous to undertaking a vision quest, a potential turning point in life taken to discover intimate personal truths, form complex…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“Writing enables a person to build a protective barrier shielding them from an adverse environment, scrutinize their circumstances, and discover how to employ new…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“Storytelling gives form to the metal dialogue of the mind and in doing so, reveals our self-fiction. Memory and imagination fills part of the…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“Canceled checks will be to future historians and cultural anthropologists what the Dead Sea Scrolls and hieroglyphics are to us.”

— Brent Staples