My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash...

Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it’s the only way they can get anything really finished.

A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine.

Horror stories give us a way of exhausting our emotions around social issues, like a woman’s right to an abortion, which I always thought was the core of ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ or the backlash against feminism...

My grandfather was hit over the head by a crane boom in Seattle. Some of the family claimed he was never a violent, crazy person before that. Some say he was. It depends who you...

When I first read the story ‘Guts’ in workshop – my fellow writers that I’ve been meeting with for almost 20 years – they laughed; they didn’t have any kind of shock reaction.

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.

His saliva tasted like the wet dicks of ten thousand lonely truck drivers.

All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.

Maybe the truth is I really want to like you instead.

If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

Nothing drives people crazier than seeing someone have a good fucking life.

We have pain and hate and love and joy and war in the world because we want them.

We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression...

I am the cause of all my upsets. I am my worst enemy.

Żyjemy i umieramy, a cała reszta to tylko złudzenie. Całe to gadanie o uczuciach i wrażliwości to jedno wielkie kurze łajno. Zmyślone, subiektywne, emocjonalne brednie. Nie ma duszy. Nie ma Boga. Są tylko decyzje, choroby...

My secret wish is right now to be romancing this dead girl. A dead girl. Any dead girl. I’m not what you’d call choosy.

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

It’s funny how you never think about the women you’ve had. It’s always the ones who get away that you can’t forget.

Only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.

My writing process isn’t a very organized thing.

People would ask me to autograph their bodies and then the next time I’d see them on tour they’d have my autograph tattooed. I decided I wouldn’t write on people anymore, but I’d give them...

When working, my diet degrades to pizza three times a day, because I don’t want to distract myself from anything.

I have a lot of money.

Si immagini, dice quello della sicurezza, di andare a raccontare a una passeggera all’arrivo che il suo bagaglio è rimasto sulla East Coast per via di un dildo. E certe volte capita con i passeggeri...

All the demons of Hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it’s not fair, but one man’s god is another man’s devil. As each subsequent civilization became a dominant power, among its first...

At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

Our purest form of joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy.

Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos...

There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That’s how your whole life will feel some day. This is...

If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.

You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis....

By the time you’re thirty, your worst enemy is yourself.

We are God’s middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no special place in history and no special attention.

Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don’t any longer need to have the relationship between one...

Reality means you live until you die. The real truth is nobody wants reality.

My father used to call me ‘bird bones’ and, well, the name fits.

If we can prove an afterlife, then we have less pressure to make our physical life last forever.

I live by fallacy. ‘If I get enough nice Ikea furniture, I’ll be a grown-up.’ Then I catch myself. Or, ‘If I get off by myself, away from the stress of modern life, I’ll be...

Anytime my work can coax bodily fluids out of someone, I’m happy.

Why do the lives of writers seem so… train-wrecky?

Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let… lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.

If you love something set it free, but don’t be surprised if it comes back with herpes.

No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.

The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object.

No, it’s not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. It won’t...

Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.

The club is too loud to talk, so after a couple of drinks, everyone feels like the centre of attention but completely cut off from participating with anyone else. You’re the corpse in an English...

Rachel hadn’t invented the dangers of toxoplasmosis; she’d gone online and built an airtight case. This wasn’t crazy talk. Neurobiologists had linked T. gondii to suicide and the onset of schizophrenia. All caused by exposure...