he was who I wanted to be when I grew up. He’s one of the great nonfiction writers of our time, a genius of reportage and the profile, someone who could take any curious whim and turn it into a compelling book.
Saved by Alara and
he was who I wanted to be when I grew up. He’s one of the great nonfiction writers of our time, a genius of reportage and the profile, someone who could take any curious whim and turn it into a compelling book.
You completely broke my model of what it’s possible for a person to do—it’s one thing to read accounts of the powers of mystics, it’s another to have one directly operate on your consciousness.
A biographer of the novelist E. M. Forster wrote, “To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” Imagine how good it would be to be that guy.
David Brooks • How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
I love being a power broker of interesting people and ideas.
in his broad face and quiet presence—
Benjamin Percy • Refresh, Refresh: Stories
“The style of the essayist is that of an extremely intelligent, highly commonsensical person talking, without stammer and with impressive coherence, to him — or herself and to anyone else who cares to eavesdrop.” — Joseph Epstein
Dinty W. Moore • Crafting the Personal Essay
“People view me as a writer and I am a writer, I'm a productive writer, but I don't start writing until the afternoon. The whole morning is devoted to listening to music and reading and mostly reading books.” What jumped out to me was a comment that signaled how seriously he took this good work: "I did not do this as a career strategy. I didn'
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