Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different

by Chuck Palahniuk

In her novel Heartburn, Nora Ephron wrote, “When you’re single you date other singles. And when you’re a couple you date other couples.” Reading those words, I was willing to believe anything she put on the page after that. The same goes for Amy Hempel, who wrote, “What dogs want is for no one to ever leave.” Fran Lebowitz once wrote, “The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.” Armistead Maupin invented Mona’s Law. It states that of a great lover, a great job, and a great apartment, in life you can have one. At most you can have two of the three. But you will never, ever have all three at the same time. Truman Capote wrote, “You can tell what a man really thinks of you by the earrings he gives you.” Such a well-worded aphorism carries all the authority of Confucius or Oscar Wilde. A wise, intuitive observation can convey more power than all the facts in Wikipedia.