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Chuck Palahniuk Quotes: 78

  • It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

    Diary

  • The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.

    Invisible Monsters

  • All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.

    Invisible Monsters

  • Of the big horror movies of the '70s, you have 'The Omen,' 'The Sentinel,' 'Rosemary's Baby,' 'The Stepford Wives,' 'Burnt Offerings' - these are all romantic fatalist movies where there's a sort of glimmer of hope... but darkness wins.

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

    Diary

  • It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

    Fight Club

  • In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then people not having socially appropriate responses, having people denying the drama by failing to react to it, and that's a really classic form of humor.

  • If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.

  • What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.

    Choke

  • Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.

    Invisible Monsters

  • I don't want to die without any scars.

    Fight Club

  • The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.

    Invisible Monsters

  • This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.

    Fight Club

  • You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.

    Survivor

  • You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.

    Fight Club

  • No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.This is all practice.

    Invisible Monsters

  • When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.

    Invisible Monsters

  • You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.

    Fight Club

  • If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?

    Invisible Monsters

  • You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.

    Fight Club

  • The things you used to own, now they own you.

    Fight Club

  • A girl calls and asks, "Does it hurt very much to die?" "Well, sweetheart,"I tell her, "yes, but it hurts a lot more to keep living.

    Survivor

  • If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes.

  • Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.

    Fight Club

  • Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship.

    Fight Club

  • Parents are like God because you wanna know they're out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something.

    Invisible Monsters

  • Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.

    Diary

  • At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

    Fight Club

  • Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.

    Fight Club

  • No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.

    Invisible Monsters

  • All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired.

    Diary

  • Reality means you live until you die...the real truth is nobody wants reality.

    Survivor

  • 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.

    Fight Club

  • I thought we were a real love relationship. I did. I was very invested in love, but it was just this long long sex thing that could end at any moment because after all, it's just about getting off. Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.

    Invisible Monsters

  • The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.

  • Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.

    Survivor

  • Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.

    Invisible Monsters

  • Make me into anything, but just love me.

    Invisible Monsters

  • It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.

    Snuff

  • Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine.

    Survivor

  • It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.

  • It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.

    Survivor

  • Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!

    Fight Club

  • Just for the record, she still loves you. She wouldn't bother to torture you if she didn't.

    Diary

  • If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

    Fight Club

  • The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress.

  • After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.

    Choke

  • You know how both life and porno movies end. The only difference is life starts with the orgasm.

  • Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.

    Invisible Monsters

  • Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away.

    Stranger than Fiction

  • Tyler lies back and asks, "If Marilyn Monroe were alive right now, what would she be doing?"I say, goodnight.The headliner hangs down in shreds from the ceiling and Tyler says, "Clawing at the lid of her coffin.

    Fight Club

  • No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.

    Lullaby

  • You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.

    Choke

  • Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things- they save you.

    Haunted

  • A book is as private and consensual as sex.

    Haunted

  • Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.

    Choke

  • Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring asshole and proud of it.

    Choke

  • We just had a near-life experience!

  • Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.

    Fight Club

  • The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.

    Rant

  • Skinny guys fight till they're burger.

    Fight Club

  • Anymore, no one's mind is their own.

    Lullaby

  • The best way to waste your life, is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate.

  • Me with nothing left to lose, plotting my big revenge in the spotlight. Give me violent revenge fantasies as a coping mechanism.

  • If Marilyn Monroe was alive right now, what would she be doing?'Clawing at the roof of her coffin.

    Fight Club

  • The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.

    Choke

  • The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room masturbating and making money.

    Stranger than Fiction

  • Some people still think knowledge is power.

    Lullaby

  • You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble.

    Survivor

  • Ideas come at any moment -- except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper.My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done.

  • Our purest form of joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy.

    Haunted

  • You think maybe if you just work harder and faster, you can hold off the chaos, but then one day you’re changing a patio light bulb with a five-year life span and you realize how you’ll only be changing this light maybe ten more times before you’ll be dead.

  • This is your life, and its ending one minute at a time.

    Fight Club

  • I am the child of a lunatic. Not a child of God.

    Choke

  • That’s the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public. We used to go to church to confess our worst behaviour, to be heard and forgiven, then to be redeemed and accepted back into our communityChuck Palahniuk in interview with TMO

  • هناك أجيال ظلت تعمل في وظائف تكرهها فقط لتستطيع شراء أشياء لا تحتاج إليها .. لا توجد حروب عظيمة في جيلنا و لاكساد عظيم .. لكن لدينا حربًا عظمى للروح . لدينا ثورة عظمى ضد الثقافة . الكساد العظيم هو حياتنا

    Fight Club

  • Prepare to evacuate soul in five, in four, three, two, one.

    Fight Club

  • trichloroethane [...] All my extensive testing has shown this to be the best treatment for a dangerous excess of human knowledge