“It’s always been a battle between a kind of Wild West frontier sex industry and the Puritan church industry. At one point there was a saying that you couldn’t throw a stone in Portland without hitting a brothel. There were more brothels than churches, and there were a lot of churches. It’s hard to find a bar that doesn’t have nude dancers in Portland. People just end up going there by default to have a hamburger and there just happens to be strippers. Strippers are as ubiquitous as pinball machines, or video poker.”

“No, you’re doing it wrong. It’s like sex, if it hurts and it’s painful you’re doing it wrong.”
(On whether writing should be painful. )

– Palahniuk on Portland, on writing, and his new book, SNUFF. Reminds me of McMurtry getting the “couple of whores from Portland” to take the guys from the asylum out in the boat, in CUCKOO’S NEST. And it makes me miss the Pearl.