“I began to read the greats in essay writing–and it wasn’t their confessing voices I was responding to, it was their truth-speaking personae. By which I mean that organic wholeness of being in a narrator that the reader experiences as reliable; the one we can trust will take us on a journey, make the piece arrive, bring us out into a clearing where the sense of things is larger than it was before.” (p.24)

“These writers might not ‘know’ themselves–that is, have no more self-knowledge than the rest of us–but in each case–and this is crucial–they know who they are<span style=”font-style:italic;”> at the moment of writing</span>.” (p. 30)

“Above all, it is the narrator who must complicate in order that the subject be given life. In fiction, a cast of characters is put to work that will cover all the bases….In nonfiction, the writer has only the singular self to work with. So it is the other in oneself that the writer must seek and find to create movement, achieve a dynamic. Inevitably, the piece builds only when the narrator is involved not in confession but in this kind of self-investigation, the kind that means to provide motion, purpose, and dramatic tension. Here, it is self-implication that is required. To see one’s own part in the situation–that is, one’s own frightened or cowardly or self-deceived part–is to create the dynamic.” (p. 35-36)