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.

As a lower-class kid, I was raised to think success would be owning stuff. Having that great job, too. Now I find my parents' dream was wrong. You never really own anything. And you're never really finished as a person.

We're making the same mistakes we made 1,000 years ago. So they must be the right ones. So relax.

In almost all my work, I try to re-invent Christian images and stories and themes. You'd be amazed by the letters I get from young Christians who recognise this and enjoy it.

My first four books, from 'Fight Club' to 'Choke,' dealt with personal identity issues. The crises the narrators found themselves in were generated by themselves.

I write in a noisy, distracting world so the books can be read there.

Portland in particular is a cheap enough place to live that you can still develop your passion - painting, writing, music. People seem less status-conscious. Even wealthy people buy second-hand clothes and look a little bit homeless.

When the 'Fight Club' movie was going into production, I quit my job so I could write full-time.

In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then people not having socially appropriate responses, having people denying the drama by failing to react to it, and that's a really classic form of humor.

With a book, you're guaranteed the audience has a certain skill level and that the audience has to make an ongoing effort to consume this product and that the project is being consumed by just one person at a time. I really want to play to that strength because it's one of the few advantages books still have.

I know that I'm going to die and that you're going to die. I can't do anything about that. But I can explore it through a metaphor and make a kind of funny, dark story about it, and in doing so, really exhaust and research as many aspects of it as I can imagine. And in a way, that does give me some closure.

My father used to call me 'bird bones' and, well, the name fits.

My characters tend to be more dynamic because they're reaching that point in their lives where their old way of being is breaking down. They're conflicted by the idea that they don't know what's next. You could call it Kierkegaard's leap of faith, when you get tired of sort of reinventing yourself on a very superficial level.

At the age of 31, I realized, 'Oh my God, I may die like everyone else.'

Meeting authors is kind of the death of the characters. That is always heartbreaking.

Verbs allow you to communicate a story in a much more converged or involuntary way for a reader. The verbs allow you to come in under the radar, below people's defenses.

There's a television show, 'Hoarders,' where people have those homes filled with stuff. Emotionally, in our minds, we get so filled with resentments where we've got a story about absolutely everything.

When I was little, my grandma used to get romance novels, and she would get hundreds of these, and she'd read a dozen a month.

In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture.

I dread the promotion part of my job. It's agony, especially compared to the private, at-home joy of writing. But being a grown-up means doing every part of the larger task.

I was born in 1962, and it seems that throughout my entire life the world has demanded peace but maintained conflict.