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

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.

I admired that stride; it was like he folded space in two with it.

This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It’s the mathematical logic of being alive.

That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.

Before she knew it was candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips.

Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn’t love me – I felt the wash of her love every day.

But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think?

It was a fleeting statement, one I didn’t think she’d hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us.

And the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?

That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother’s palm and fingertips.

But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.

To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.

We’re all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there’s too much thought and not enough heart.

Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

I feel really assured by the fact that the women I have loved I have loved for always.

The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.

I feel like I’m a veteran at this now.

When you win a race like this the feeling is very, very good. There have been times when I have been flat-out to finish sixth, but you can’t see that from the outside.

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

If I find something and feel as though I can contribute to [it] in a way and feel I’m in it, whatever that means.