American Horror goes for a very specific kind of Seventies suburban downer ambience – Flowers in the Attic paperbacks, Black Sabbath album covers and late-night flicks like Lets Scare Jessica to Death. It even has Go Ask Alice-era urban legends. – Rob Sheffield
The phrase off with the crack of the bat, while romantic, is really meaningless, since the outfielder should be in motion long before he hears the sound of the ball meeting the bat. – Joe DiMaggio
Every reader finds himself. The writers work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. – Marcel Proust
