People think putting together an article is like going to the market wth a precise list of what you want to include. It’s often more like going into the woods with a basket, foraging, and spreading it all out on the table at home, thinking,”what the hell do I do with all this?”

If I do start out with an agenda, it almost always evaporates by the time I'm done talking to people who know more about the topic than I do. The real trick of writing is to hide the fact that you, the researcher, ended up knowing less than you did when you started.

And there are few things more terrifying than opening up an interview transcript and deciding which quotes to use and which parts to summarize, knowing they entrusted you with their personal stories, hoping they won't read the finished product and think you betrayed them.

I WAS TELLING MY THERAPIST... the written word is kind of always a lie, just because of what it is. You can't purely transmit information directly from speaker to reader. There is no unaltered communication. There is always damage. You have to take a deep breath and try anyway.

And he was like, "That's nice, Simcha, but we were talking about your drunk and disorderly citation"

(This didn't actually happen. SEE? All communication is inherently untruthful! Like I told you!)