I often need physical gesture to balance dialogue. If I write in public, every time I need to know what a character is doing with his hand or foot, I can look up and study people and find compelling gestures that I can harvest. Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.

You become smart when you don't need to quote someone anymore." I am still stupid: I quoted Chuck Palahiniuk

Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you.

The first step to eternal life is you have to die.

History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.

And it [Fight Club novel] was written so general that my father thought I was writing about his father, and my boss thought I was writing about his boss. People really put themselves, you know, in the shoes of the narrator.

...no way could I fall in love. I just couldn't go there yet. Settle for less. I didn't want to process through anything. I didn't want to pick up any pieces. Lower my expectations.