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.
That saying, about how you always kill the thing you love, well, it works both ways.
Verbs allow you to communicate a story in a much more converged or involuntary way for a reader. The verbs allow you to come in under the radar, below people's defenses.
'At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom' by Amy Hempel showed me the lean quality of prose.
I think Chris Brown gets kind of dismissed as a gay writer, and I think Chris's books are really, really smart. I wish his books sold a little more widely.
You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.
I get a lot of letters from women who insist that 'Fight Club' is not just a guy thing. They insist that women have the same rage and need the same outlet.
You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.
When I was little, my grandma used to get romance novels, and she would get hundreds of these, and she'd read a dozen a month.
Your life isn't about doing one perfect 'thing' and then falling down dead. It's more like going to church or writing a book. You do it over and over, always trying to be a little bit better. Then you die.
My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their world in a different way.
I just don't want to die without a few scars.
Sundays tend to be a day where just I do nothing but visit people. It's kind of like trick-or-treating.
I try to forget about the expectation that's out there and the audience listening for the next thing so that I'm not trying to please them. I've spent a huge amount of time not communicating with those folks and denying that they exist.
Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying?
Sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold.
We're so much more likely to feel sympathy for an animal than another person; thus, the best fiction uses animals to define truly humane behavior.
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.
A big reason why I started writing is I felt that fiction had stopped evolving. All other entertainments were getting better, constantly, as technology allowed. Movies. Video games. Music.
You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.
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.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?
A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine.
I dread the promotion part of my job. It's agony, especially compared to the private, at-home joy of writing. But being a grown-up means doing every part of the larger task.
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.
No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.
Every woman is just a different kind of problem.
I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.
Fiction is no longer the dominant storytelling device of our time. In the 19th century it worked great, and fiction was the king, but it's not the king any more.
The answer is there is no answer.
One thing I really envy about my friends who have kids is that as their children develop, they're able to revisit their own developmental stages and recognise themselves and undo a lot of things they decided.
Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.
Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?
Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished.
A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.