To merely observe your culture without contributing to it seems very close to existing as a ghost.

If nothing else, there's comfort in recognising that no matter how much we fail and sin, death will limit our suffering.

Jack Palance was my distant uncle - that's the family gossip. Growing up, my family knew everything about his face getting burned and scarred in the military and how that mutilation led him to become such a famous 'heavy' in films. I prayed for good scars of my own. Not just acne scars.

Portland is quickly becoming one of those lovely, lush Third World countries where kinda-rich people retire with their money.

If we can prove an afterlife, then we have less pressure to make our physical life last forever.

Arguing that God doesn't exist would be like people in the 10th century arguing that germs and microbes didn't exist because they couldn't see them.

My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.

I am enormously uncool. I've made a cottage industry of being uncool. And I'm fine with that.

David Fincher is a genius.

Movie brawls tend to be bloodless and quick.

People said that 'Fight Club' would be impossible to turn into a movie, but I think David Fincher loved that challenge.

I get a lot of letters from women who insist that 'Fight Club' is not just a guy thing. They insist that women have the same rage and need the same outlet.

My writing process isn't a very organized thing.

Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.

I haven't had television since 1991, and it definitely influences me. As a child of the 1970s, I couldn't hold a narrative in my head; I was lucky if I could hold a joke in my head, because every time you turn on television or radio, it wipes the slate clean - at least in my case.

Sometimes the very best way to deal with unpleasant things is to depict them in ways that allow people to laugh at them and destroy the power of unsayable things, rather than refusing to acknowledge them.

I think Chris Brown gets kind of dismissed as a gay writer, and I think Chris's books are really, really smart. I wish his books sold a little more widely.

When I first read the story 'Guts' in workshop - my fellow writers that I've been meeting with for almost 20 years - they laughed; they didn't have any kind of shock reaction.

Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, 'Chuck, you do this really well. And this is much better than setting fires, so keep it up.' That made me a writer.

So many of our enormous emotional crises are lived through the media. They're lived through movies; they're lived through what we watch on television - they're not actual events in our life.

We don't have friends, so we watch 'Friends' on TV.

I've got two dogs; they're Boston terriers, and they're allowed everywhere.

If there had been zombies on the iceberg when the Titanic hit it, that would have made a much better movie.

I think my heart always goes out to men at the peak of their celebrity who checked out. There's such an odd, horrible trend in my lifetime for it - Kurt Cobain, David Foster Wallace, Alexander McQueen, Heath Ledger.

My parents divorced about the same time the movie 'The Parent Trap' came out, about two twins at camp who scheme to get their parents back together. I had that same fantasy.

The act of writing is a way of tricking yourself into revealing something that you would never consciously put into the world. Sometimes I'm shocked by the deeply personal things I've put into books without realizing it.

Men are destroyed for being rebellious, and women destroy themselves by failing to be rebellious. Unless you can make that next jump to either getting along with people or resisting people, you are ultimately destroying yourself.

The best thing about getting a flu shot is that you never again need to wash your hands. That's how I see it.

I usually write in my kitchen, which is a large, octagonal room that looks into woods - three big windows look out into the trees.

While writing, I tend to repeat the same song, endlessly, for thousands of times. This helps me ignore any lyrics, and helps create a consistent mood for each book.

The last seven, eight games, Ryan is playing the best basketball of his career.

You want to be playing your best basketball at the end of the season. But not only are we playing good, we're getting better. This is truly a team.

I think our intensity tonight, our defensive intensity, was really good. That's the best defensive intensity we've had all year. Our bench was incredible.

I have the best two guards in the country on the same team. I will continue to say that because I believe it, and I don't say things I don't believe.

I really wanted to do this because I want our players to get the tradition and the history. They hear about it. They see it. They read about it. But the best way to feel it is to know the players and the coach himself.

I had no idea that he was that good of a passer. It causes you to pause in what you do (double-teaming). He was just terrific. The best thing about him is that he doesn't even care if he scores. That kid is all about winning.

That's the best defense we played all year.

The very best players are my kind of players.

With the last play of regulation, we didn't have any timeouts left and I am trying to be judicious, but also use my timeouts to the best of my ability. After all that and then go into overtime on a great shot by Robertson is just a testament to these kids' character.

We want to recruit the very best players in the country. That's why we're here right now: We have great players.

We're playing our best basketball of the year by far.

We're playing our best basketball of the season by far right now. We're improving, we're getting better.

People were really running at him and he needs to have more patience. I think he's one of the best shooters, not only in the league but in the country. I think he'll be fine.

He's playing the best basketball of his career. Without him, we would not be here.

He's playing the best basketball of his career right now.

I thought our intensity defensively for the entire 40 minutes was really, really incredible. That's the best defense we've played all year.

Our team is definitely playing its best basketball right now. If you look over the course of the last eight games, we've really been playing great defensive team basketball.

We played terrific tonight. It was our best defense of the year.

Who we start Thursday (at center) will be based solely on practice the next two days. It'll be based on rebounds, who sets the best screens and blocks.

This team never, ever gets affected ... they just battle back. We're playing our best basketball of the year by far right now.