I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.
Chuck PalahniukA 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.
Chuck PalahniukThink of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. Thatโs the earth. Why it goes around. Weโre the rocks. And what happens to usโthe drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuseโwhy, thatโs just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.
Chuck PalahniukIn all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple days of hopelessness. Future scientists will call it the Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case history of chasing rainbows.
Chuck Palahniuk