Chuck Palahniuk

Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you — do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?

Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950’s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.

We come from a generation of people who need their TV or stereo playing all the time. These people so scared of silence. These soundaholics, these quietophobics.

The journalist researches a story. The novelist imagines it.
What’s funny is, you’d be amazed at the amount of time a novelist has to spend with people in order to create this single lonely voice. This seemingly isolated world.
It’s hard to call any of my novels “fiction.”