We need to be ambivalent - in the essay, and in life too. Ambivalence - having mixed feelings, entertaining contradiction, living with fluctuation - is a widened embrace. It's about the coexistence of things, and in that light, we have… — 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, digging into that lively mishmash of opinion for drift, a sense of what to see, what to hear, what to read, etc. - and I'd like to think that scene's still vital, although I understand there's… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share
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 trails in the wake of every news story. So there's always the pandemonium of the Internet, if you need to get your lunatic opinions out in public. I find most of that stuff a little insane-making… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share
“...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 sentences, in the shifting tones and the selection of details, in the comedy, the sadness, and the confusion. For the space of an essay, I'm the air you breathe, everywhere and nowhere. With a personal essay,… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share
“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 the essay is more like a perspective, an angle of vision, a complicating factor, a questioning presence. I don't sit on the sidelines or pretend to objectivity; and I'm not afraid to stick my neck out… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share
I suppose I like certainty as much as anyone else, but I also feel that the hidden costs are high, that we pay a heavy price for our convictions. This is a human issue as well as a writing issue - at least in the personal essay as I practice it. Any real essayist knows that certainty is an editorial… — Charles D'Ambrosio Copy Share
