Sometimes I'll have an end in mind, but it's always false, always corny, just a dumb idea anyone could have, sitting on a barstool. An abstract thesis with no real life inside it. And then I start writing and the… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
What the nostalgic past and the imaginary future seem to share in common is a form of idealism, perhaps a dream of wholeness. Our… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
I have lots of fiction in the drawer, but the essays I mostly kick out into the world, ready or not. Fiction incubates differently,… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
I'm kind of a creature of the alt-weekly universe - my real education into higher culture was acquired in coffee shops, reading those papers,… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
Even with an assignment, I take over, I find a freedom and make the idea my own, and that's where you get the sense… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
Nowadays I imagine people find freer and more accepting venues in blogs, on Tumblr and Instagram and Facebook, in the riot of shouting that… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
“...the boy saw faces disinigrate before his eyes, faces that fell to pieces, then disappeared, leaving a hole.” — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
I like the desperado aspect of essays, the free lance, that mercenary kind of thing, so I just do it, without asking anyone's permission.… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
My presence isn't simply about "character" - I'm present in every part and particle of the thing, in the sound and rhythm of the… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
“She sighed. Ignatius, do you know what the opposite of love is? Hate, I said. Despair, Sister said. Despair is the opposite of love.” — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
“It's hard to kill yourself by taking Tylenol. You die from liver failure, which takes a long time...” — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
Too much me is annoying under any circumstance, but too much me in an essay, however personal, would mar the art. My "character" in… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
I suppose I like certainty as much as anyone else, but I also feel that the hidden costs are high, that we pay a… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
The poet Amanda Nadelberg puts it nicely in an interview when she says "often what I listen for in poems is a sense that… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
Our nostalgic dreams of perfection thrive just as dangerously in the other direction too, in the imaginary future, that bold and tantalizing future where… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
I'm not a very savvy operator - it's not who I am, it's not what I do - and so I have to go… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share Image
