That’s the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public. We used to go to church to confess our worst behaviour, to be heard and forgiven, then to be redeemed and accepted back into our community
Chuck Palahniuk in interview with TMO

..statues of saints in somebody else's religion. To me they're just rock shaped into glorified nobodies.

My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly - all these make for great stories.

The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.

The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy that pretense.

When I went to college, I majored in American literature, which was unusual then. But it meant that I was broadly exposed to nineteenth-century American literature. I became interested in the way that American writers used metaphoric language, starting with Emerson.