Ellen

“Good. Now. Let’s talk our talk. Your beloved institution seems like it wants to step up to the next level. Be a culture player. Crank out all those smug nullities who can make the stylish, insipid, top-notch crap. Stuff we can jerk off to but that will also make us sorry, but not too sorry. Sexy sorry. Am I right?”
― Sam Lipsyte, The Ask

“One night in the House of Drinking and Smoking we were victims of what I would later call a home invasion. I didn’t know the term then. I think I learned it later, from a rap song, or a movie based loosely on a newspaper columnist’s fear of a rap song.”
― Sam Lipsyte, The Ask

“The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them.”
― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

“We are going to eat ice cream and we are going to eat shit. The trick is to use different spoons.”
― Sam Lipsyte, The Ask