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.

Aimee Bender

Categorized in : Brain Skills Sadness

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.

Aimee Bender

awake dream writing

I want to be violated by insight.

Aimee Bender

insight want

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.

Aimee Bender

smart brain heart

It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.

Aimee Bender

rescue surprising moments

Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.

Aimee Bender

later-in-life strong kids

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

Aimee Bender

magazines pages mom

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.

Aimee Bender

light comfort yellow

My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen." — Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)

Aimee Bender

rope band stories

I like birthday cake. It's so symbolic. It's a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just 'Happy birthday!' because it's this emblem of childhood and a happy day.

Aimee Bender

childhood cake birthday

and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.

Aimee Bender

wine eye wise

That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.

Aimee Bender

handmade burgers littles

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

Aimee Bender

best-work pages writing

Not getting bored of my own story and/or character is one of the main struggles I have had with novel writing, and I have put to bed big chunks of work that just didn't sustain my interest.

Aimee Bender

struggle writing character

The writing I tend to think of as 'good' is good because it's mysterious.

Aimee Bender

mysterious writing thinking

I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.

Aimee Bender

unbearable said thinking

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.

Aimee Bender

sadness loss life

I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.

Aimee Bender

away-from-each-other groups tears

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

Aimee Bender

tickets plot character

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

Aimee Bender

feel-good language body

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.

Aimee Bender

cutting simple moving