“Glen Hirshberg’s stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content.”

When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It’s nourishing; it’s rejuvenating.

You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground.

When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.

I have had with novel writing, and I have put to bed big chunks of work that just didn’t sustain my interest.

I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.

and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it’s giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.

As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.

There’s a gift in your lap and it’s beautifully wrapped and it’s not your birthday.

Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children…

My lover is experiencing reverse evolution.

A Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.

You feel wonderful, you feel like somebody knows you’re alive, you feel fear because it could be a bomb, because you think you’re that important.

I want to be violated by insight.

My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.

It’s a pleasure to dive into Hirshberg’s storytelling skills in American Morons.

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.

Without this sadness I wouldn’t even know who I am.

Now my ability to notice things and respond to things and be here is far more profound. With that comes happiness, with it comes sadness, but it’s a beautiful life.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

Depression is the way my eyes have learnt how to close more than open.

Sometimes the impact of Mozart’s music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can’t deal with a woman of their own age.

Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.

I love sex. It should be animalistic, it should be sadistic, it should at times be masochistic. There are few rules and moral conventions.