Writer Quotes by John D'Agata

Inclusiveness isn't what I want to push back against. The obsession with facts is.

— John D'Agata

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

I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

— John D'Agata

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

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

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

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

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

A risk is something that feels risky to the person who's taking it.

— John D'Agata

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

Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about.

— John D'Agata

“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

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

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

It's fun to just skim through piles of books in the stacks of a library.

— John D'Agata