The Personal Essay Quotes

#1. As a student at the time, I kind of felt like my only options as a nonfiction writer were to either jump on the personal essay bus or linger back at the station, hoping that some other heretofore unknown mode of transportation was going to magically show up to take me where I wanted to go.

John D'Agata

#2. The tradition of the personal essay is full of self-appointed outcasts. In that tradition, I am not a poet or the press, but an essayist, a citizen thinker.

Eula Biss

#3. I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel.

Alain De Botton

#4. The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection that I find the energy of the essay.

Richard Rodriguez

#5. The reason for writing that essay was less a personal agenda than an attempt to explain my unease with the general label of "immigrant literature" after I had read quite a number of reviews (in different countries) involving books written by 'immigrants.'

Sasa Stanisic

#6. I think people should consume their music any way they want. If it's more practical for them to listen to it on an iPod or something, that's fine by me.

Tristan Perich

#7. Whether you're a memoirist or not, there's a psychic cost for lopping yourself off from the past:

Mary Karr

#8. I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.

Patti Smith

#9. I'm boring. My beliefs are neither here nor there.

A. N. Wilson

#10. The more the change, the more it is the same thing.

Alphonse Karr

#11. Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?

Terry Pratchett

#12. The essay is one of my favourite forms of writing, and I feel like what's inside is really personal, more so than with shorter pieces.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#13. You are a human being now, not like them [the animals].

Herbert Mason

#14. Whither thou goest, I will go.

Cassandra Clare

#15. Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.

Samuel Smiles

#16. Writing about oneself is an egotistical adventure unless the act of self-exploration revolves around the distinct goal of heightening a person's cache of knowledge, ideas, and level of self-awareness.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#17. As the Epic Film, Noah, debuts this weekend, those of you who have read Samrajni of Pemako know about the Noah subplot in the novel.
Yes, Safiya, the protagonist is distantly related to Noah...

Roy C. Marien

#18. The forms of the short, written poem as they have been developed in English over the past few centuries can be usefully seen as compressed, truncated, or fragmented imitations of other verbal forms, especially the play, story, public oration, and personal essay.

Robert Scholes

#19. I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.

Jodie Foster

#20. I myself love getting cookbooks and novels that some congenial person has already tried and liked.

Cheryl Mendelson

#21. What I think is important about essayists - about the essay, as opposed to a lot of personal writing that kind of finds its way into public view - is that the material really has to be presented in a processed way.

Meghan Daum

#22. Models are similar in both frameworks. It is a common situation that a model in Ember maps one-to-one with a model in Rails.

Anonymous

#23. You kissed me like that when I was a blushing bride ... ? I wonder what I was blushing about?

Gracie Allen

#24. It wasn't until I went to college and I got my first motorcycle that I understood the thrill of speed.

Vin Diesel

#25. Attempting to express a person's objective reality and subjective state of mind with the written word is an endless task because writing alters our perception of reality and amends our mental equilibrium.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#26. Your creativity is way older than you are, way older than any of us. Your very body and your very being are perfectly designed to live in collaboration with inspiration, and inspiration is still trying to find you - the same way it hunted down your ancestors.

Elizabeth Gilbert