Chuck Palahniuk

Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, 'Chuck, you do this really well. And this is much better than setting fires, so keep it up.' That made me a writer. ”

I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Guevara, here's our next Fidel Castro, here's someone who's going to wave the flag.' And I was like, 'No, it's just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won't have a career.' ”

At school I was lazy. But I started working when I was 15, washing dishes at a local truck stop restaurant. I was really, really bored with school, and I wanted to get a job as fast as I could. School was just so easy. There was just no challenge to it. ”

As a lower-class kid, I was raised to think success would be owning stuff. Having that great job, too. Now I find my parents' dream was wrong. You never really own anything. And you're never really finished as a person. ”

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. ”

My goal is never to make fun of religion. ”

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. ”

If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best. ”

I'm always trying to reach a transcendent point, a romantic point, but reach it in a really unconventional way, a really profane way. To get to that romantic, touching, heartbreaking place, but through a lot of acts of profanity. ”

People said that 'Fight Club' would be impossible to turn into a movie, but I think David Fincher loved that challenge. ”