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" I have bougainvillea and a magnolia tree outside my window. Not that anything will ever beat the view I had from my desk window in my little farmhouse in Nebraska. Just a dirt road stretching out as far as you could see, with prairie grass on either side. "

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" Other dogs may do their jobs in their own unique and perfectly wonderful ways, but there will always be that dog that no dog will replace, the dog that will make you cry even when it's been gone for more years than it could ever have lived. "

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You

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" Obviously, nobody chooses not to have kids because they'd rather sleep in late. It's a very visceral decision, and it's a complicated decision. "

" To me, having 'material' for an essay means not only having something to write about but also having something interesting and original to say about whatever that might be. "

Meghan Daum

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" We don't want privacy so much as privacy settings. "

" I always lamented that I wasn't a writer during the late '60s and the early '70s, with the New Journalism and Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson and all those people. "

" What I think is important about essayists - about the essay, as opposed to a lot of personal writing that kind of finds its way into public view - is that the material really has to be presented in a processed way. "

" I love the essay. It's my favorite genre to work in. "

" Almost nothing is more tedious than complaining about the weather. "

Meghan Daum

Complaining

Weather

" People have always taken photos of themselves, either with camera timers or by handing their Nikons over to strangers in foreign countries and then paying large sums to get them back. "

" Because of social media, we have a lot of personal essays floating around; you see them on Facebook: everyone's either reading them or writing them. Some of them are great; some of them are diary entries put forth as essays. "

" Quitting Facebook would be like partially erasing myself. Quitting Twitter would constitute further erasure. Pretty soon, I'd be invisible. I was never on Instagram or Tumblr, which I guess means I never completely existed in the first place. "

" I think people seem to want to read pieces that are shorter but not as short as the pieces they can read in small bites on the Internet. It may be that the sort of long essays are hitting a sweet spot between the tiny morsels online and the full-length book. "

" I've always been interested in this notion of what is authentic and how we define that and why our culture imposes certain emotions and emotional constraints onto experiences. "

" I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal. "

" Opinion is dominating, which is absolutely ridiculous - there wouldn't be anything for people to have opinions about if there weren't people out there gathering facts on the ground. "

" Much of the magic of language, of course, lies in its fluidity. "

" For my part, if I'm working while flying, I'm often a bit relieved to be forced to shut down the computer on final descent. But I guess I'm a slacker. "

" In the world of opinion writing, there's something called the 'to be sure' paragraph. A sort of rhetorical antibiotic, it seeks to defend against critics by injecting a tiny bit of counter-argument before moving on with the main point. "

" A typical day in my writing life starts with looking at pictures of real estate online for at least 20 minutes. If I happen to be actually in the market for a house, I do this for 40 minutes. Then I walk my dog, come back home, and tell myself I can look at real estate for another five minutes. "

" I don't keep a diary or a journal. Sometimes I'll send emails to friends, and that's a way of recording what I was thinking at any given time. But I've never been a journal keeper. "

" We're not handed situations based on our established likes and dislikes; we get what's available. "

" Let's face it: every campus has its share of students who can't quite comprehend that extreme political correctness is often born of the same intolerance and anti-intellectualism as standard-issue bigotry. "

" If you do the things you enjoy and are good at, I really have a feeling that that will lead to having a fulfilling life, and people with fulfilling lives are able to be 'good people.' "

" It's great that Time is moving in the direction of validating those who, by choice or circumstance, will never be parents. But the point is not simply that society should stop judging those of us who don't have children. It's that society actually needs us. Children need us. "

" Air travelers, of course, are famous for their hubris. They carry on too many bags and use the restroom when the seat-belt sign is on. "

" L.A. is a constellation of microclimates and microcosms, a library with dozens of special collections. A 20-minute drive can bring a temperature change of 15 degrees. Crossing an intersection can feel like crossing a national border. "

" There's a particular kind of single woman whose relationship with her dog has a level of intensity and affection that may be both the cause and the result of her singleness. For a long time, I was that woman. "

" I loved Woody Allen's short pieces. I was equally influenced by Woody Allen and Norman Mailer. I was very into this idea of being high-low, of being serious and intellectual but also making really broad jokes. "

" A young female essayist saying they're influenced by Joan Didion is like a young female singer-songwriter saying they're influenced by Joni Mitchell. "

Meghan Daum

Singer-Songwriter

Young

" We use our gadgets for distraction and entertainment. We use them to avoid work while giving the impression that we're actually working hard. "