I thought 'Fight Club' was great as David Fincher's version.

My grandfather was hit over the head by a crane boom in Seattle. Some of the family claimed he was never a violent, crazy person before that. Some say he was. It depends who you believe.

The best fights don't occur between strangers. They occur between friends who trust each other.

My books are all fantastically sentimental.

The folks who read my books are so passionate about each one of them that the people making my movies are more afraid of my readership than they are of me.

Of the big horror movies of the '70s, you have 'The Omen,' 'The Sentinel,' 'Rosemary's Baby,' 'The Stepford Wives,' 'Burnt Offerings' - these are all romantic fatalist movies where there's a sort of glimmer of hope... but darkness wins.

When I first used to tour, guys would come up and say, 'Where's the fight club in my area?' and I would say, 'There isn't one.' And they'd say, 'No, no, you can tell me, you can tell me.'

Writing gave me the world.

My parents used to fight a lot, and I think they fought a lot at night, and they would turn the television up to hide the sound of their fighting.

Fiction is no longer the dominant storytelling device of our time. In the 19th century it worked great, and fiction was the king, but it's not the king any more.

A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine.

Most novels, I find, are three times longer than they need to be. Very little happens, and I don't want to waste my time with them.

I never think I'm making fun of my culture. In fact I'm making fun of myself, because I catch myself doing some very stupid things.

'At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom' by Amy Hempel showed me the lean quality of prose.

I come from generations of farmers.

To be honest, I hate silence.

So much of 'Fight Club' was a rant against fathers.

For me, writing is a kind of coping mechanism.

I've always been very curious about fringe cultures where people temporarily adopt a different social model or way of presenting themselves.

The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy that pretense.

You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting... you.

What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises.

The third person allows characters to really attack themselves. We all do this - attack ourselves - every hour of our lives.

Since September 11, 2001, the real world has become too scary for a lot of people to be with - all the time.

In 'Diary,' the motto really is: 'Where Do You Get Your Inspiration?' It coaches us to be aware of our motives and not just be a reaction to the circumstances around us.

Your life isn't about doing one perfect 'thing' and then falling down dead. It's more like going to church or writing a book. You do it over and over, always trying to be a little bit better. Then you die.

Sundays tend to be a day where just I do nothing but visit people. It's kind of like trick-or-treating.

Think about George Orwell's three-minute hate from the novel '1984' and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled and boring, perhaps we do need some sort of short-term violent chaos incorporated into them, to make them more palatable.

My private history in terms of people in my life who are dead is very easy to discuss. I don't feel those people can be threatened or intruded upon now. But I am enormously protective of the people who are currently in my life, my existing friends and family. That is where the curtain is drawn.

My books didn't fit a marketing niche.

I don't think 'Guts' could get financed as a movie.

The young men, they look to me for a story they can get nowhere else, a challenging risky story.

I live by fallacy. 'If I get enough nice Ikea furniture, I'll be a grown-up.' Then I catch myself. Or, 'If I get off by myself, away from the stress of modern life, I'll be OK.' Then I catch myself.

We're so much more likely to feel sympathy for an animal than another person; thus, the best fiction uses animals to define truly humane behavior.

Every decade, we get a stunning collection of dynamic, heartbreaking short stories. In the past, those collections came from Barry Hannah, Mark Richard, and Thom Jones.

Why do the lives of writers seem so... train-wrecky?

I'm trying to make order out of chaos, trying to find some way of rationalising the horrific things that people do or the way the world is.

If you flee from the things you fear, there's no resolution.

Destruction is always an attractive idea. My brother and I used to spend weeks making models of cities so that we could destroy them in 15 minutes. There's a fantastic joy in destroying something that you've meticulously built. Then you're free to build a new thing. Destruction and creation... they're inseparable.

I wouldn't get nearly as many books written if I lived in New York. The Columbia Gorge is fantastic. When the sun shines, I just want to be outdoors.

'Romance' is based on my entire creative process. I fall in love with an idea, obsess over it, isolate myself with it, and when I eventually introduce it to my friends, they all tell me that it's stupid.

Anytime my work can coax bodily fluids out of someone, I'm happy.

I think that I am responsible for the death of thousands of things and for the misery of thousands of people, just through the things that I buy and how I live my life, and these are not things that ever deserved to die.

I want my characters to really overuse their coping mechanisms to the point where they break down within 300 pages.

Few things in life seem more sexy than a banned book.

I used to work as a volunteer in a hospice, but I don't have any nursing skills or cooking skills or anything, so I was what they call an escort. I would take people to the support groups every night, and I would have to sit sort of on the sidelines so I could take them back to hospice at the end of the meeting.

I think it's more important to write something that brings men back to reading than it is to write for people who already read. There's a reason men don't read, and it's because books don't serve men. It's time we produce books that serve men.

Sometimes, like in 'Invisible Monsters,' I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.

In books, you can just wallow in dialogue, and you can just wallow in written words. In screenplays, every line has to serve the purpose of the line that's implied before it and the line that's implied after it. Maybe five lines have to do the work of fifty lines.

I love the power of words - no music or special effects - and I want to demonstrate that power.