I'm a citizen of the republic of empathy.

The bullshit never ends. That’s the main thing to remember. It never ends.

The translator has to be a good writer. The translator has to hear music too. And it might not be exactly your music because the translator needs to translate the music. And so, that is what you are hoping for: a translator who gets what you are doing but who also gets all the ways in which it won't work in the new language.

I bought an energy bar, and as I ate it a great weariness came over me.

People gave names to things so they could tell stories about them, goddam fairy tales about children who got out alive.

Atticus Lish is a true original and this is a tremendous book, relentless, moving, written in prose of marvelous integrity. Now that America and the novel are dead, I hope we can have more great American novels as alive as this one.

No emotion or insight is too small to inflict on the world. Let it all fly. Don't let it eat you from the inside.