I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open…

I write about what I'm thinking about. I write about what is bothering me or what is a political, aesthetic, or ethical issue or…

— Lynne Tillman

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general…

— E. B. White

I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people are not…

— Susan Sontag

Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays

— E. B. White

I truly believe that writing is a continuum - so the different genres and forms are simply stops along the same continuum. Different ideas…

— Chris Abani

I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

— Sloane Crosley

I thought I was going to write fiction but I fell backwards into non-fiction. It started when I got locked out of two apartments…

— Sloane Crosley

I don't believe in writing for goals, or else I'd write essays.

— Tom King

I think those women who get themselves to write essays, it's not an easy thing to do because as women, you're not encouraged to…

— Lynne Tillman

“Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”

— E.B. White

I continue to write essays about art. The visual is always part of my work, and it gives me immense pleasure to make up…

— Siri Hustvedt

In the early 60s, you read your essays to your supervisor rather than hand them in. I was both lazy and clever, and realised…

— David Starkey

So, as a child in school, I used to write essays on how I spent my holiday or about a visit to a temple.…

— Sudha Murty

I got to take classes in writing with a fountain pen, and actually, something you make is your own textbook. So, while you're learning…

— Maya Hawke

In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write…

— Jose Saramago