Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.

The more things you own, the more they own you.

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

The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says.

Masochism is a valuable job skill.

Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?

Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.

I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television.

I always really curious to see how people interpret things. I know my version, and I'm kind of bored with my version so I want to see their version.

You realize you have no control over how you're perceived.

We're all going overnight express delivery straight to Hell.

People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.

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 answer is there is no answer.

For years now, I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.

Those who can forget the past are way ahead of the rest of us.

Ever since college, I make friends. They get married. I lose friends.

The future is just wasted on some people.

History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.

And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.

We thought all this teaching was to make us smart. What it did was make us stupid. With all the little facts we learned, we never had the time to think.

The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday.

Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break.

Most times, it's just a lot easier not to let the world know what's wrong.

We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.

Either a species learns to control its own population, or something like disease, famine, war, will take care of the issue.

And the seventh rule is if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.

Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.

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.

If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.

Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.

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

More and more, the hardest part of crying is when I can't stop.

You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real.

I know this because Tyler knows this.

I like to get people moving and jumping. I think it's good to add more emotion and chaos.

She's not wearing makeup so her face just looks like skin.

In good old Colonial Dunsboro, masochism is a valuable job skill. It is in most jobs.

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

If you flee from the things you fear, there's no resolution.

You have to jump into disaster with both feet.

When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.

What I'm always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of campfires and fireplaces - the ghost stories that engaged us.

That quest for something pretty. A cheat. A cliche. Flowers and Christmas lights, it's what we're programmed to love.

Find good in what the world says is evil.

Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need.

The bigger the mistake looks, the better chance I'll have to break out and live a real life. Our real discoveries come from chaos. - Brandy Alexander

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I am Jack's Broken Heart.

You can't base your life on the past or the present. You have to tell me about your future.

Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.