Phillip Lopate quotes:
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The dinner party is a suburban form of entertainment. Its spread in our big cities represents an insidious Fifth Column suburbanization of the metropolis.
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Think of a dinner party as a club of revolutionaries, a technocratic elite whose social interactions that night are a dry run for some future takeover of the state.
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The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.
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In the best nonfiction, it seems to me, you're always made aware that you are being engaged with a supple mind at work. The story line or plot in nonfiction consists of the twists and turns of a thought process working itself out.
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Hedonism can be a rational response to a difficult life.
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The essay is a wonderful medium. I might mention that some writers who longed to be novelists were better as essayists: Sontag, Baldwin, Vidal, Mary McCarthy, Mailer.
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I am apt to be harsh in my secret judgments of others, seeing them as defective because they are not enough like me.
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For most of my life, I have wanted broad impact but now, at 72, I'm not so sure that's always my first priority.
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A personal essay often includes some or a lot of personal confession. That makes the reader feel less lonely in their confusion and darkness.
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Confession makes you a more trustworthy narrator.
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Contradictory strands create an essay that's richly ambivalent.
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Domesticity has been a challenge for me but painful as it's been, engaging with family has been a school for reducing solipsism and increasing my understanding of people's different reactions to stress.
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Indeed, at times it's best to shut up.
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My wife and daughter have accused me of being too silent at breakfast but I don't want to talk when I don't have much to say.
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Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.
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... I vowed that I would always respect the right of an individual to kill himself. Whether suicide was a moral or immoral act I no longer felt sure, but of the dignity of its intransigence I was convinced.
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Doubt is my boon companion, the faithful St. Bernard ever at my side. Whether writing essays or just going about daily life, I am constantly second-guessing myself. My mind is filled with 'yes, buts,' 'so whats?' and other skeptical rejoinders. I am forever monitoring myself for traces of folly, insensitivity, arrogance, false humility, cruelty, stupidity, immaturity and, guess what, I keep finding examples. Age has not made me wiser, except maybe in retrospect.
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Have fun writing, because it enhances both the writer's and reader's experience.
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I imagined a psychic pain growing inside him (myself) that demanded some physical outlet. Suicide must have been his attempt to give Pain a body, a representation, to put it outside himself. A need to convert inner torment into some outward tangible wound that all could see. It was almost as though suicide were a last-ditch effort at exorcism, in which the person sacrificed his life in order that the devil inside might die.
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I like the freedom that comes with lowered expectations.
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I really do like to write and when I'm not, I think, "Okay, I'll be a good citizen now" but fact is, that's secondary.
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If someone in my family is getting emotionally bent out of shape, I've had to learn to adapt.
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I'm fortunate in being able to find great satisfaction in my work.
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In new work, we need to see the shadow, however faint, of previous literary effort.
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It bothers me when I can't, for example, remember a name. I don't know if it's pre-senility or whether there are too many names packed in our brains.
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I've had an enduring appreciation of psychology.
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Most good essays are conversations with yourself - not just your decided thoughts but your dilemmas.
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My other work, teaching, also is satisfying because I can be with people but in controlled circumstances, which aren't as likely to yield the pain of dealing with family.
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The essay must be artistically rendered: You must keep the reader engaged, whether with wit, conflict, mischief, and/or yes, with honesty.
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The knowledge that my discriminations are skewed and not always universally desirable doesn't stop me in the least from making them.
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The trick is to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one's example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.
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You must read a lot of personal essays - you needn't reinvent the wheel.