Molly Simpson

you should read the word “I” as a name for a sort of collective of people that meets up in me. I try to keep that in mind all the time.

The word “essay” comes from the French “essayer” — to try, to attempt. Michel de Montaigne, who invented the form in the 16th century, wasn’t showing off what he knew but exploring what puzzled him. His essays were experiments in understanding, not demonstrations of expertise.

Human beings are always, and always will be, a frontier between what is known and what is not known. The act of turning any part of the unknown into the known is simply an invitation for an equal measure of the unknown to flow in and re-establish that frontier: to reassert the far inward, as yet unknown horizon of an individual life; to make us wha

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The more we care about something — our money, our careers, our relationships, our self-image — the more serious we tend to become. We strive for more certainty, structure, direction, and order so that we’ll feel safe and have a “competitive advantage” in the world. But here’s the cruel paradox: the more we tend to care about something, the more we

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I deduced that Johanna was probably an Alice. You can learn a lot by observing how people hang out with their friends. She laughed like a hyena, and they were obsessing over some obscure book, and they were so raw and cute. I’d never been as intrigued by a human being before.