I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.

Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.

I give boring people something to discuss over corn.

Glen Hirshberg's stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content -- the stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader's brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing. It's a pleasure to dive into Hirshberg's storytelling skills in American Morons.

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

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.