You're the perfect girl', he said, rubbing his chin. 'You expect nothing.

With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.

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.

The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.

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

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

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