I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.

- Leslie Fiedler

I don't really think of my essays as being about myself. I know it sounds insane, but I just don't think of them as a memoir. They're essays; they're not an autobiography.

- Sloane Crosley

I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

- Sloane Crosley

Theological writing is usually done in essays or books, but I hope to show that if we concentrate on sentences, we may well learn something we might otherwise miss.

- Stanley Hauerwas

When I was younger, when I was at school, I did read a lot of fiction. I think as you get older perhaps you're interested in essays and biographies and things like that. I think it's just important to just read as much as you can.

- Ronald Frame

I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble.

- Paul Theroux

Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays.

- Nicholson Baker

I love writing essays and articles, so it's hard for me to resist taking assignments that inevitably pull me away from larger projects.

- Meghan Daum

For me, writing essays is very much about processing ideas and offering them up to the reader so that they are fully cooked.

- Meghan Daum

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

- Margaret Fuller

I like English, and I like writing essays, and that kind of stuff.

- Abigail Breslin

I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I'm going to be if I grow up.

- Lenny Bruce

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

- Karl Kraus

My high-school papers, my college-application essays, read like Norman Mailer packed in a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich.

- James Wolcott

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

- Joyce Carol Oates

When it comes to the personal essays I write, I just convince myself that no one will ever read them.

- Dani Shapiro

For me, writing essays, prose and fiction is a great way to be self-indulgent.

- Diablo Cody

The essays are different because ultimately it's things I'm interested in, and I'm really just writing about myself and using those subjects as a prism.

- Chuck Klosterman

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.

- Chuck Klosterman

I don't like writing essays or theory.

- Adrian Mitchell