Or this

"Every man has within himself the entire human condition." --Michel de Montaigne, the father of the essay

Also of note is an entry from Saturday, March 6, 1999, amid observations like “I’ve been thinkin’ and I’ve decided that Nick, Bri, and AJ are my ideal men,” “As far as I know, nobody likes me—I mean like-likes me,” and “My feet are freezing!” is a little ditty: “Guess I gotta write more often, huh? Ya know this could be really famous someday like The Diary of Anne Frank if I become someone special when I grow up.” 

Ha.

Needless to say, it was painful enough to read my own laborious days in prose, and, especially, those incessant professions of love for unattainable boys, both real and another-dimension-real. I shall never put you through that, world. My hope is that my little piece of life in the form of a collection of essays can reveal pieces of your life: parts & accessories. That's what these pieces are. We are all made of them. 

 "We go to literature--and perhaps especially creative nonfiction--to learn not about the author, but about ourselves; we want to be moved in some way. the emotional resonance happens only through skillful use of artistic techniques. As Salman Rushdie put it, "Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart." --from Tell it Slant by Brenda Miller