John D'Agata > Quotes

“What happens when an essayist starts imagining things, making things up, filling in blank spaces, or — worse yet — leaving the blanks blank?”
― John D'Agata, The Next American Essay

“Maybe every essay automatically is in some way experimental — less an outline traveling toward a foregone conclusion than an unmapped quest that has sprung from the word 'question'.”
― John D'Agata, The Next American Essay

“Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change.”
― John D'Agata, The Lost Origins of the Essay

“My grandmother’s is the world that dropped the bomb—itself a slick object—so elegantly smooth it managed to slip past American consciousness, past enemy lines.”
― John D'Agata, Halls of Fame: Essays