McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object.

You know how you finish a bag of chips and you hate yourself? You know you’ve done nothing good for yourself. That’s the same feeling, and you know it is, after some digital binge. You feel wasted and hollow and diminished.

Nonfiction narratives are really powerful and valid in themselves. But one thing that you don't get sometimes from the more clinical or academic books or nonfiction books is that you don't get to hear the person's voice; you don't get them as individuals. You get a few quotes and you hear them as sort of a case study: numbers, examples, anecdotes, maybe a paragraph here, and that's about it.

Every time my brain parks the car neatly in the driveway, my mouth drives through the back of the garage.

We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows--a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We capture everyone's imagination.

I'm better than you think. I'm even better than I think I am.

You treat a kid with respect and as an adult you talk to them as if they're smart people. But you don't throw at them the trappings of adulthood and you know, the darker stuff.