I'm always looking for context in which people tell stories. In "Fight Club" it's these support groups for dying people, and then in "Choke" it's 12-step recovery groups. In one novel it's artists' colonies, in another novel it's a diary form that submariners' wives typically keep so that when their husband comes back from serving on a submarine they have an accounting of their spouse's time. So I'm always looking for, number one, a non-fiction context - because you can tell a more outrageous story if you use a non-fiction form.

The only thing I shy away from is non-consensual violence. I can't write a story where someone is a simple victim because it's boring.

What do you do when your entire identity is destroyed in an instant? How do you cope when your whole life story turns out to bw wrong?

Self improvement is masturbation.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.

All major publishing houses have these big fat biographies sitting there, waiting for people to die. All you have to do is slap on the end and put in on the market. It's that kind of commoditization and completion of your life before you die - and this kind of imposition of a public idea of self that replaces the actual living self - that I find so frightening.

You tell yourself that noise is what defines silence. Without noise, silence would not be golden. Noise is the exception.