"Udell: There's no need to make a major case out of it. Every small town has its shortcomings. Some small towns have a problem with the kids running off the the big city, other small towns might have worries about a drought affecting the crops, one of ours just happens to be a mindless killing machine who feeds on our fear."

"I read the signs hanging in storefront windows hoping a tale of drama would emerge: Dam Being Torn Down Sale! declared the first. Everything Must Go Before the Dam is Torn Down and Town is Destroyed, trumpeted another. Preflood Sale, screamed a third. Then, like a golfer playing the back nine trying to finish before the heavy stuff comes down, I was struck by a lightning bolt. My God! That's it! That's my story... SMALL TOWNS ARE A BARGAIN HUNTER'S DREAM!"

"To compensate for their skittishness around one another, humans have developed an elaborate system of body language. Folded arms, for instance, may signal that the subject is closed off and wishes for the conversation to end, or that he is an Indian chief. Either way, avoid these people. A woman with her legs splayed wide may be saying "Welcome. How do you do?" or "I am adventurous and open to new ideas." Either way, seek these women out."

"It's like we're family except we're not related, we didn't grow up together and we don't spend any time with each other. It makes you feel safe to know that if I needed a shovel or some lime, just down the road a bit is a neighbor I could take it from. Just because I don't know a lot of these people's names doesn't mean I won't ask them for things. That's the beauty of this town: neighbors who have things I want."

"Wigfield, said the sign. Wigfield's Hottest Ladies. I was intrigued. When was it incorporated? What was its population? And just how hot were these ladies?"

"My book would be written from the heart, probably my own. I would talk about how the death of Small-Town America brings great pain to me because I had always had an appreciation for these tiny villages. For who doesn't feel a fondness for a place where you know all your neighbors, and you can keep your doors unlocked, or you could enter your neighbors' home at night because you know his doors are unlocked?"

"I worked for the Federal Department of Transportation, painting the center lines on interstates. It was rewarding work, with the added benefit of being unchallenging. But following a heated dispute with my foreman over the meaning of the word sick day, I quit my job shortly after he fired me. But freedom has its price, which I soon found out was money. So, much like a butcher naturally becomes a surgeon, or a boxer becomes a cop, I decided to apply my knowledge of drawing long, white lines on asphalt to drawing much shorter ones with loops and curls on paper. In short, words. I became a writer!"

"What I learned made me angry. What I read made me sleepy."

"I had been on the road for what seemed like weeks but was probably closer to days, more specifically hours."

"Words cannot describe all the things that I have left to write."

"Dedication: As this book, including this dedication, was written in chronological order, I have, so far only myself to thank. This is assuming I will continue to be involved."

"Yes, I was in the service. Yes, I was stationed overseas. Yes, I was dishonorably discharged. And no, I don't want to talk about it. Here's what happened: I didn't know she was one of ours. I certainly didn't know she was an officer. And I meant no disrespect when I offered to treat us to her."

"I know how to drive, I mean, I got my operator's license, I just choose not to drive. I guess I'm afraid if I drive people might get hurt. And people would get hurt, that's pretty much been proven to my satisfaction. I'm not proud of it. I'll say that to anybody. I'm the first to admit that I should be nowhere near a powered vehicle. But my operator's licence says different, so occasionally all hell breaks loose."

"I would like to dedicate this book to all the good people in charge of nominating books for the Pulitzer Prize. Now, I don't know exactly who you people are, but I do know that whoever hands out those Pulitzer Prizes is on the stick. They are a sharp crowd who I would wager are also very attractive. So once again, kudos to the whole Pulitzer crew. They do a great job, and by saying this I mean to take none of the glory away from the wonderful men and women working at the National Book Award. Thank you."

"To me, Wigfield is a deeply funny, refreshingly original book, but to be fair, it is the first book I've ever read."

"The reason America's small towns are disappearing is this... 50,000! I've hit 50,000! If you'll forgive me for a moment, I just need to catch my breath. Okay, I'm gathering myself. I decided to go back and do a word count, and I've passed 50,000! Take that, Hyperion! I bet you thought I'd never finish! Now pay up!"

"I love to party, that's not a crime, although I have done some time as a result, but that's not a crime either."

"God, animals are stupid. They will do anything I force them to."

"What will happen to me? I mean, if they flood the town and I'm forced to leave, how am I supposed to move my mobile home?"

"Mr. Gein: I'd bet you two would burn like a gin-soaked hobo."

"I'm an outcast. Nobody will talk to me. It's just like The Scarlet Letter, the only difference being that my isolation is due to narrow-minded people refusing to think as individuals condemning an innocent without having accurate information. In The Scarlet Letter, the woman is shunned because she is a harlot. She deserved what she got. I think she came onto a priest or something."

"For my money, it was hard to be excited about libraries until they started checking out movies. I can't wait until the switch-over is complete. What better way to show the obsoleteness of a book than by setting it next to a DVD? I'm glad libraries are leading the charge against books."

"People are refusing my requests for interviews and lodging. Last night, at what I considered to be a diner, the homeowner refused to serve me. The once affable strippers used to seem pleased when I tucked a little something inside their G-strings, now they insist that something be money. This isn't about me. I'm just worried about the town and what it's not doing for me."

"Combined with water, lye heats to over two hundred degrees, and as it heats it burns into the back of my hand, and Tyler places his fingers of one hand over my fingers, our hands spread on the lap of my bloodstained pants, and Tyler says to pay attention because this is the greatest moment of my life."

"This..is a chemical burn," Tyler says, "and it will hurt worse than you've ever been burned. Worse than a hundred cigarettes...You'll have a scar."

"With enough soap," Tyler says, "you could blow up the whole world."

"You know, the condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip it on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night then you throw it away. The condom, I mean. Not the stranger."

"What Marla loves, she says, is all the things that people love intensely and then dump in an hour or a day after. The way a Christmas tree is the center of attention, then, after Christmas you see those dead Christmas trees with the tinsel still on them, dumped alongside the highway. You see those trees and think of roadkill animals or sex crime victims wearing their underwear inside out and bound with black electrical tape."

"Worker bees can leave Even drones can fly away The queen is their slave"

"The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing so she won't commit to anything."

""Sticking feathers up your butt," Tyler says, "does not make you a chicken."

"Marla shouts to the police that the girl who lives in 8G used to be a lovely charming girl, but the girl is a monster bitch monster. The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong things so she won't commit to anything. "The girl in 8G has no faith in herself," Marla shouts, "and she's worried that as she grows older, she'll have fewer and fewer options." Marla shouts, "Good luck.""

"You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood."

"There's hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved."

"Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered."

"Fight club isn't about winning or losing fights. Fight club isn't about words."

"Tyler says I'm nowhere near hitting bottom, yet. And if I don't fall all the way, I can't be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn't just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn't a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can't just play it safe anymore. This isn't a seminar."

"What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women."

"My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said get a job. When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said, get married. I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need."

"Sometimes you do something, and you get screwed. Sometimes it's the things you don't do, and you get screwed."

"Tyler said, "I want you to hit me as hard as you can.""

"After Tyler and Marla had sex about ten times, Tyler says, Marla said she wanted to get pregnant. Marla said she wanted to have Tyler's abortion...How could Tyler not fall for that."

"You can swallow about a pint of blood before you're sick."

"The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club."

"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."

"I embrace my own festering diseased corruption."

"I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact I was breathing."

"Funerals are nothing compared to this," Marla says. "Funerals are all abstract ceremony. Here, you have the real experience of death."

"The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club."

"I wasn't the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue."