You move your life across the country and make a commitment to a place, and to a genre, … - John D'Agata

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I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago

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 the place nor the genre might be what you thought they were going to be, or that the world you thought you were going to find in school doesn't actually exist.

Across, Commitment, Country, Moving, Realize, School

Same Author Quotes

Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change.

Change, Ends, Essay, Essays, Everything, Sometimes

I never really understood the idea that nonfiction ought to be this dispensary of data that we have at the moment. Also, roughly around the time we were doing this fact-checking. And I never really understood why people think what nonfiction's job is to give them information as opposed to something else.

Giving, Ought, People, Thinking, Time

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

Borders, Definitions, Heads, Needs, Pedagogically, Talking

The whole movement of an essay is propelled by a fundamentally human impulse to want to figure things out.

Essay, Figures, Human, Movement, Want

An essay is something that tracks the evolution of a human mind. It tracks the evolution of a single consciousness in order to give us an experience - an experience of looking for something and then finding ourselves in a different place by the time we've finished our journey.

Evolution, Experience, Give, Journey, Order, Track