What you write should entertain you and serve you first. Don't worry about maintaining anything beyond your own attention. Focus on exorcising your demons in the work. If you can do that, then you'll succeed in the world.

Nevertheless, if you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane. A child allows us to revisit the excitement we once felt about, well... everything. A generation later, our grandkids bump up our enthusiasm yet again. Reproducing is a kind of booster shot to keep us loving life.

There is a social contract in "Fight Club" and in "Choke" where the protagonist has deceived a whole bunch of people. In "Choke" it's all of these people who think that they've saved his life, and really care about him because they've embraced him and they've been his saviors. In "Fight Club" it's all of these people who are dying of various diseases, and they thought that Edward Norton was also dying so they allowed him really strong pent-up emotions.

Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it was all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple.

The bigger the mistake looks, the better chance I'll have to break out and live a real life. Our real discoveries come from chaos. - Brandy Alexander

Real smarts begin when you quit quoting other people.

It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos. What it's going to be, I don't know. Even after all that rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And maybe knowing isn't the point. Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.