A certain number of people have to live their lives outdoors between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and a certain number of people can only leave their homes between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. So basically, public life has to be lived in these shifts, in order for everyone to fit on the streets because there's just no more room for any more infrastructure, any more highways. So it polarizes the community into day people and night people, and it becomes sort of a metaphor for racism and classism.

This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea that I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone.

I'm really glad that I spent my twenties messing around and having disaster after disaster - with people who were doing likewise - because it's really my greatest treasure now.

My goal is more to be remembered. They'll remember this thing and like it in the future. The trick is to stay remembered long enough for that to happen.

It's interesting because when David Fincher was making "Fight Club," he said, "It's a romance." And it really is. Almost everything I ever write is just a romance. And that needed to be sort of pointed up at the end of "Fight Club." The film has a very different ending than the book does.

The world of American politics is more contentious than it has ever been in my lifetime.

We're the culture that cried wolf.