Best Quotes from Crafting The Personal Essay by Dinty W. Moore with Page Numbers

The personal essay is, of course, personal, meaning of you, from your unique point-of-view.

The essence of the form is found: The personal essayist... takes a topic... and holds it up to the bright light, turning it this way and that... studying every perspective, fault, and reflection.

It is always an effort, a trial, not a lecture or diatribe.

The essayist does not sit down at her desk already knowing all of the right answers, because if she did, there would be no reason to write.

The personal essay is a gentle art, an idiosyncratic combination of the author’s discrete sensibilities and the endless possibilities of meaning and connection.

The essay invites extreme playfulness and almost endless flexibility.

There’s nothing you cannot do with it; no subject matter is forbidden, no structure is proscribed.

You get to make up your own structure every time, a structure that arises from the materials and best contains them.

I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts.

I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love.

“The best writing also provokes an emotional reaction, be it laughter, sadness, joy, or indignation.”

“Such an essay may confirm the reader’s sense of things, or it may contradict it. But always, and in glorious, mysterious ways that the author cannot control, it begins to belong to the reader.”

“The personal essay reveals. And to reveal means to let us see what is truly there, warts and all.”

“Expressing yourself in simpler words requires more craftsmanship and skill than using multisyllabic, flowery language, and it almost always works better.”

“The private essay hides the author. The personal essay reveals.”

“Even if we aren’t writing from memory — if instead we are trying to string together an extended metaphor or to explain a particularly complex sequence of assumptions leading to a logical conclusion — remember that we as authors arrive at an understanding of our words and intentions well before the reader.”

“In our highly visual culture — television, movies, videos on an iPad — it is important to remember just how magical good writing can be.”

“To be resonant is to be ‘strong and deep in tone, resounding.’”

“Remember the reader who will see your words.”

“Self-expression may be the beginning of writing, but it should never be the endpoint.”

"One writes out of only one thing — one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give." — James Baldwin

"The memoir essay is all about the I, not just as a source of insight, but as the subject itself."

"There is no shame in using yourself as subject, and no need to hide that fact behind some veil of objectivity and erudition."

"Memoir simply means it happened in the past."

"This use of personal experience for reflection — not just 'this happened to me,' but 'this happened and it gave me occasion to ponder' — distinguishes that thin line between pure memoir and the memoir essay."

"Most of us walk around day-to-day filled with questions. Why do bad things happen to good people?"

"Reading about other people’s lives, other people’s challenges, and other people’s small victories gives the reader fresh perspectives, i.e., more ways to consider the questions at hand."

"Aren’t these universal themes to which most anyone can relate?"

"When writing your memoir essay, remember the crucial importance of details. Don’t tell us what happened, show us."

"Neither a hero nor a victim be. If the story you share is all about how wonderful you are, why should the reader believe you?"

"The style of the essayist is that of an extremely intelligent, highly commonsensical person talking, without stammer and with impressive coherence." — Joseph Epstein

"I cannot fix my object; ’tis always tottering and reeling by a natural giddiness: I take it as it is at the instant I consider it; I do not paint its being, I paint its passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people say, from seven to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute." — Michel de Montaigne

"My conceptions and my judgment move only by groping, staggering, stumbling, and blundering, and when I have gone ahead as far as I can, still I am not at all satisfied." — Michel de Montaigne

"Actions speak louder than words, but words are powerful, too."

"The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am." — Virginia Woolf

"The point of a work of art could be reduced to one word or a short phrase — well, then we’d need only to write that word or phrase on an index card and be done with it."

"When we are content, the whole world somehow seems contented. When we are anxious or unhappy, we see the unsettledness in all people and all things."

"What’s a metaphor? It’s for spurring us along so that we might see the world in new ways."

"It does well to know what came before you, but write for tomorrow, not for the past."

"Michel de Montaigne may have been an odd man, but he was fearless about his writing and entered many dark rooms with no wiring yet installed."

"If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things."— Henry David Thoreau

"I write to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means." — Joan Didion

"The only time I know that something is true is the moment I discover it in the act of writing." — Jean Malaquais

"Know thyself!" — Heraclitus

"A responsibility of literature is to make people awake, present, alive." — Natalie Goldberg

"The happy byproduct of arranging the perfect sentences in the exact order necessary... is that one has a richer life."

"Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head." — Ann Patchett

"The personal essay can seem as if the author is just ambling along, considering various thought flowers along the winding path, but remember that the writer has to be in control."

"The goal is to be writing in a fresh and surprising way."

"Tackle something so vexing that in the end you wind up surprising yourself."

Leisure has a value of its own. It is not a mere handmaid of labor; it is something we should know how to cultivate, to use, and to enjoy.

Civilization, in its final outcome, is heavily in the debt of leisure.

The success of any society worth considering is to be estimated largely by the use to which its fortunati put their spare moments.

It is self-culture that warms the chilly earth wherein no good seed can mature.

We might make ourselves spiritual by detaching ourselves from action, and become perfect by the rejection of energy.

It is in his pleasures that a man really lives, it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

What is more rare made beautiful by that distinction of mind which was the result of alternating hours of finely cultivated leisure.

A little paragraph... illustrates with charming simplicity the gilding of common toil by the delicate touch of a cultivated and sympathetic intelligence.

It is to leisure that we owe the 'Life of Johnson,' and a heavy debt we must, in all integrity, acknowledge it to be.

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

For Smokey, the world was an endless source of fastmoving objects and interesting smells.

A successful essay is a hunt, a chase, a ramble through thickets of thought, in pursuit of some brief glimmer of fuzzy truth.

The marvel is that out of this apparent causelessness, out of this scattering of idiosyncratic seeing and telling, a coherent world is made.

Successful writers revise and revise and revise until the words and the sentences and the paragraphs and the order in which the paragraphs appear seem to fall naturally into place.

Ideas might begin to float off, but they can’t go too far, because they are locked into the gravity of the home planet.

You are, for once in your life, the great celestial puppeteer, deciding which planet will rule and how the gravity will play itself out.

Even the least of things can hold the key to a universe of meaning.

Remember, you are not a cat.

Writing is no different — the effort pays off eventually, but along with the hard work, always remember to keep the spirit of playful exploration alive.

Like a poem, a genuine essay is made of language and character and mood and temperament and pluck and chance.

It was most likely just words. Language.

That’s where writers begin, I believe, and that initial impulse needn’t be abandoned just because we have grown into our intellect, logic, and sense of order.

Purpura is letting the sheer musicality and evocativeness of language create part of the experience for her readers.

But having such fun for yourself is only the beginning.

Essay writing is about transcribing the often convoluted process of thought, leaving your own brand of bread crumbs in the forest.

When I gave up writing poetry I was very sad, ... But I was delighted to find that nonfiction prose can also carry meaning in its structures.

The range of rhythms in prose is larger and grander than it is in poetry, and it can handle discursive ideas and plain information as well as character and story.

Listen to their advice, but if they are pushing you to write safely, to sound like everyone else, you can politely ignore their advice after giving it fair consideration.

Just see where they lead, and always hold on to you spirit of playfulness.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Conflict is an important aspect of good storytelling.

The center of the essay is some question or problem that the writer is trying to solve.

Human beings are con-flicted animals, so there is no shortage of tensions that won’t go away.

Without conflict, your essay will drift into static mode, repeating your initial observation in a self-satisfied way.

Virtually nobody in life is a simple villain or a plain-vanilla saint.

The best drama holds fast to the messy truth about human motivation.

Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men.

You are the protagonist in the essay, the consciousness through which the world is viewed.

Essayists don’t have all the answers. If they did, there would be no reason to write.

Without conflict, your essay will drift into static mode, repeating your initial observation in a self-satisfied way.

What gives an essay dynamism is the need to work out some problem, especially a problem that is not easily resolved.

Even the guides eventually relax. We are, Fritz assures us, a "very low maintenance" group of guests.

Only Thomas and Lu remain a team for the full seven days. The rest of us play musical canoes every day or so, switching paddling partners, trying out new seats, new chemistry.

What we now see, I think, is closer to the truth of the matter.

I have never experienced so much wilderness in my life, never been so removed from civilization, never been so aware of my own smallness.

The canyon is mighty.

Do I have to feel horrible about this?

I’d also like to be a part of it. Call it selfish if you will, but I’d be quicker to support the preservation of an ecosystem that includes me as a regular member.

I didn’t visit the river in a bulldozer, after all. I came by canoe.

"If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?" — Anne Lamott

"What unites the spiritual essay, however, is the quest to explore life’s basic mysteries."

"All that is needed to write a spiritual essay is honest curiosity about the questions that surround us."

"Faith, by definition, means we don’t know for sure."

"The conflict of the spiritual essay is internal."

"The true power of spiritual writing... is about discovering parts of your own self."

"Don’t attempt to answer all of the great religious mysteries your first time out."

"Look for a smaller piece of the puzzle of life, and start exploring there."

"These prompts... are not strict guidelines or rigid maps."

"The goal is to discover your spiritual questions, not mine."

Each person, each life, is distinctive, even if you didn’t grow up in a family of acrobats or spend ten years sleeping alongside lions on the African veldt.

It is not what happens to us in our lives that makes us into writers; it is what we make out of what happens to us.

The personal essay…demands of the writer is to have an interesting mind, and, as Epstein reminds us, a 'strong personal presence.'

If you feel dull and unspectacular, the reader is already on your side.

You can highlight a particular trait, if it is in fact true to your nature, and shine a bright light upon it for a few pages, letting it take center stage.

What I know best is my own self, and I know my own self really really well, because I’m willing to study this subject and truly consider it in ways that others have not been willing to do.

If the world find fault that I speak too much of myself, I find fault that they do not so much as think of themselves.

What does Karen know about me? Marie? Karen knows what it was like for me to grow up in an incestuous family.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

Be hard on your sentences, be hard on your paragraphs, be ceaseless and unrelenting in your revisions, but stop questioning your ability to be a writer.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite.

Food is not just sustenance, then, it is a mood changer, an essential component of marking key events in our lives.

If your family went camping or had a cabin, you probably recall cooking hot dogs on an open fire.

Our recollections of a departed grandmother may be linked to the smell of boiling cabbage or pot roast with onions.

Many people, myself included, find that when we are happy, we eat something special to celebrate, and when we are depressed, we allow ourselves some sort of treat in order to cheer ourselves up.

Food is frequently representative of culture and identity.

A good food essay is not a restaurant review or a recipe, or a mere catalogue of ingredients.

The appreciation of food is more than just eating.

That’s the 'you' that should be front and center this time around.

Food is love.

"You can’t force the joke. You can’t pretend to be funny. You can’t sit in front of your keyboard and simply decide that 'I’m going to write something funny now.'"

"If the humor and irony of the story you tell is not fresh enough to still sneak up on you and make you smile, then don’t expect it to sneak up on the reader."

"You need a story, not just jokes. If your goal is to write compelling nonfiction, the story must always come first—what is it you are meaning to show us, and why should the reader care?"

"The humorous essay is no place to be mean or spiteful."

"The funniest people don’t guffaw at their own jokes or wave big 'look at how funny I am' banners over their heads."

"Humor has to be honest that way."

"Howie wanted me to have a comfortable chair. Putting my middle-aged bottom in a soft, commodious seat brought him some sort of pleasure."

"You want a comfortable chair, yes? One you can sit in and relax?"

"For instance, Thurber opens one of his best-known essays with, "I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father.""

"We are often our funniest when we are at our most inept."

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

I have almost no idea what I am doing, but over the years I’ve hung in there, plugging onward, trusting that instinct — or perhaps dumb luck — will get me through.

That space quickly begins to seem a distance, and that distance soon enough resembles a gulf.

How do you please someone who resents your very existence?

Humorous essays... are based on the exploration of questions, on exploring those aspects of life that the writer wants to more fully understand.

Maybe evolution is occurring even now, and maybe female teenagers are developing beyond this tendency toward prickly unreasonableness.

Perhaps this whole problem is just a half-million year aberration, a necessary but ridiculous step along the evolutionary continuum.

As for my daughter, she will stop being a teenager eventually.

For now though, just getting my female teenager to speak to me is like ... well ... like pulling teeth.

I don’t like pulling teeth. It tends to be painful on both ends.

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”— Kurt Vonnegut

“Do your research” is a far better morsel of advice.

Nothing opens the minds, lifts us out of a rut, or suggests innovative directions for story or thought than finding a bright new fact, living a novel experience, or seeing something we’ve never seen before.

Curiosity … sounds more tepid than obsession, but it’s a lot more dependable in the long run.

The people are the story.

It’s like going to school your whole life, getting crash courses on these really interesting topics.

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

You follow out a strand of curiosity and pretty soon you’ve got an interesting digression, a whole chapter, a book.

I trusted my instinct that trying something new would be the better option, and it was.

Curiosity has always served me well as a writer, along with my willingness to hop into a canoe or ask a stranger an unusual question.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

This is June, the month of grass and leaves … Each season is but an infinitesimal point.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases.

Nature is about change, interaction, and rejuvenation.

The key to successful nature writing often comes before you put pen to paper.

Without your personal, distinctive voice, there is no reason for the essay.

An essay of any sort can include what you don’t understand, and that’s true here too.

Even the rough spots are interesting.

Fresh spring buds and greenery can be so wonderfully revitalizing, but remember that death and decay are also an important part of nature’s cycle.

You can also learn about nature by simply planting one seed in a tiny pot by the window.

"Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind."— Seneca

"Each day of that trip brought new sights and new adventures."

"Travel writing is easy, because travel has a natural story arc."

"By definition, however, a travel writer is often just passing through."

"Try to see what is really there, not what past travel articles tell you will be there."

"Read as much as you can about your destination before you arrive."

"There is a difference between a travel writer and a tourist."

"Add people to your story."

"Be enthusiastic and curious. It will make your travel more interesting and will always show through in the writing."

"Not all travel is uplifting and life-affirming."

All the good writing I’ve done in the last ten years has been done in the first twenty minutes after the first time I wanted to leave the room.

Those men and women who sit down with pen in hand, or computer keyboard on the desk, and stay there, regularly, no matter how stuck or uninteresting they feel on a given day, end up creating new essays, poems, or stories.

The hardest, and most crucial, part of the enterprise is attaching the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair and applying oneself consistently to the task of moving words around on the page.

I’m a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound.

If you don’t sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won’t be sitting there.

Those bad days are going to come one way or another. That’s simply a fact of the writing life.

Writing is a mysterious process. All you can do is open yourself to the possibilities, be willing to work, and get at it.

Deadlines make wonderful motivational tools.

Listen to every bit of opinion and feedback. But also heed this advice: 'When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right.'

Praise is good, but even better are helpful suggestions that allow you to make a piece of writing twice as wonderful.

The point of the essay is to change things.

The personal essay is a gentle art, an idiosyncratic combination of the author’s discrete sensibilities and the endless possibilities of meaning and connection.

The essay invites extreme playfulness and almost endless flexibility.

A blog can be a discussion of sorts, a place for consideration, just like the classical essay form back in history.

Blogging is free, and good practice.

To blog is 'to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while...'

Good writing is what matters.

A successful blog...might be just what a number of people are looking for.

A publisher wants books that sell, not books that sit in boxes in a warehouse.

People flock to blogs that directly address something people want to learn more about or something people are struggling over and need help with.

"When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’"

"The true definition of writer’s block is when the writer gives up."

"Imagine yourself at a stoplight, waiting for the red circle to turn green."

"Just because your internal writer’s insecurity is telling you that 'this work is not good enough,' doesn’t mean those voices must be heeded."

"Stopping the critical voices may be out of your control, but how you respond in the face of them is in your control."

"I’m feeling discouraged and uninspired today, but I’m just going to write some sentences anyway, and it doesn’t even matter if they are bad sentences."

"Bad sentences are not a problem, unless they remain on the page when the work is finished."

"Personally, I never show anyone my first drafts, ever, under any circumstances."

"Just filling the page with words is an accomplishment to be celebrated."

"If you stop writing for the day, the week, the month, your entire life, then the bad voices have won. Don’t let that happen."

“I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” — James Michener

If you want to succeed as a writer, you must learn not only to revise, but to revise with vigor.

One reason I think people don’t change things a lot is... if I don’t feel 100 percent certain that I can I really try not to put it in.

If you are serious about remodeling, what you really need to do is to move each and every piece of furniture out onto the front lawn.

Nothing remains in your essay — not the opening scene, not the funny anecdote in the middle, not your elegant closing paragraph — unless it serves the purpose of the essay.

We don’t really know our thoughts or feelings until we discover them in the act of writing.

With each new version, I learn more about the truth of the piece, so I know which one to pick, which one is right.

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.

Allowing the Parent voice to enter into the process too soon is a form of writer’s block and can shut down the enterprise entirely.

Each of these three aspects of yourself — childish wonder, adult logic, and parental concern — are gifts you can use to make your writing stronger.

I’ve been rejected thousands of times. You have to accept that as part of the arrangement, and allow it to make you more humble — and stubborn to succeed.

Though for a day or two I was tempted to write about nothing but polar bears and arctic trains for the rest of my career, what I eventually did with this experience was return to my desk and write five more books.

If you don’t truly enjoy moving words and sentences around on the page... then you are going to have a hard time persevering through the ups and downs and inevitable setbacks.

Figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.

You must cultivate a practice of careful writing and vigorous, painstaking revision to make sure the piece you submit is as absolutely crisp, fresh, and flawless as can be.

Let the work itself convince the editor; it has to be strong enough to stand on its own.

Work gets rejected because it is not good enough (yet), but don’t let a rejection slow you down.

You come to care about a place when you know it this intimately, when you see the patterns, and discern the subtle changes.

Get out of the damn car and walk around. Get to know your street, the street behind you, and the people up and down your block.

When I’m sauntering, wandering, strolling, ambling, rambling, bopping along on two sturdy feet, I’m much more optimistic. I feel entirely alive.