Chuck Palahniuk

“How torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.”

“...the girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.”

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

“The damaged loves the damaged.”

“There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper.”

“For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.”

“I'm sorry if this all seems a little rushed and desperate. It is.”

“What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.”

“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.”

“If it is the case that love does survive death, then you may consider this to be a happy ending. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Happily ever after or not.”

“There's worse that people can steal from you than money.”

“A baby is such a blank slate, like training the understudy for a role you're planning to leave. You truly hope your replacement will do the play justice, but in secret you want future critics to say you played the character better.”

“How you're still always trapped.How your head is the cave, your eyes the cave mouth. How you live inside your head and only see what you want. How you only watch the shadows and make up your own meaning.”

“The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.”

“You're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life.”

“This woman is Pocahontas. She is Athena and Hera. Lying in this messy, unmade bed, eyes closed, this is Juliet Capulet. Blanche DuBois. Scarlett O'Hara. With ministrations of lipstick and eyeliner I give birth to Ophelia. To Marie Antoinette. Over the next trip of the larger hand around the face of the bedside clock, I give form to Lucrezia Borgia. Taking shape at my fingertips, my touches of foundation and blush, here is Jocasta. Lying here, Lady Windermere. Opening her eyes, Cleopatra. Given flesh, a smile, swinging her sculpted legs off one side of the bed, this is Helen of Troy. Yawning and stretching, here is every beautiful woman across history.”

“HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it's so cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me.”

“Proof that no investment is yours forever.”

“The career of a movie star consists of helping everyone else forget their troubles. Using charm and beauty and good cheer to make life look easy.”

“Each wedding picture was less of a memento than a scar. Proof of some horror movie scenario Katherine Kenton has survived.”

“It's a fate worse than death to spend eternity in harness, serving as Lilly Hellman's zombie, brought back to life at dinner parties.”

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

“Everything you see is based on fact of a event thats already happen, Even light only travels so fast.”

“This wasn't any mere song and dance; here was a bold, blaring declaration howling itself into the empty face of death.”

“In truth, the degree of anyone's success depends on how often they can say the word yes and hear the word no.”

“We hear the ambient noise of children singing. We hear lions and tigers roar. Hyenas laugh. Some jungle bird or howler monkey declares its existence, screeching a maniac's gibberish. Our entire world, always doing battle against the silence and obscurity of death.”

“If we can forgive what has been done to us . . .If we can forgive what we've done to others . . .If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our beingvillians or victims.Only then can we maybe rescue the world.But we still sit here, waiting to be saved. While we'restill victims, hoping to be discovered while we suffer.”

“I came to Party Crashing because accidents happen. People you love will die. Nothing you treasure will last forever. And I need to accept and embrace that fact.”

“I stepped into the back of a cab and simply told the driver, "Follow the blue Christmas tree...”

“Every high school has its Romeo and Juliet, one tragic couple. So does every generation.”

“The government says Rant's alive because they need a villain. The kids say he's alive because they need a hero.”

“Ask yourself: What did I eat for breakfast today? What did I eat for dinner last night? You see how fast reality fades away?”

“If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot?”

“First your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.”

“What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God.”

“Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.”

“No, I say, it's fine.Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. Just great, I say. Really.”

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

“Picture the moment when your mom and dad first saw you as something other than a pretty, tiny version of them. You as them, but improved. Better educated. Innocent. Then picture when you stopped being their dream.”

“How folks lay claim to a loved one is they give you a name of their own. They figure to label you as their property.”

“It's the Marilyn Monroe school of medicine where enough of any drug will cure any disease.”

“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.”

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

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

“History is nothing except monsters or victims. Or witnesses.”

“This is how fast your life can turn around. How the future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday.”

“Want to talk third wave feminism, you could cite Ariel Levy and the idea that women have internalized male oppression. Going to spring break at Fort Lauderdale, getting drunk, and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of patriarchal society that you no longer know what's best for yourself.A damsel too dumb to even know she's in distress.”

“It only takes one mistake,' the Dan Banyan guy says, 'and nothing else you ever do will matter.' With his empty hand, he takes one of my hands. His fingers feel hot, fever-hot, and pounding with his heartbeats. He turns my hand palm-up saying, 'No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you'll always be known for that one poor choice.' He sets the blue pill on my palm, saying, 'Do that one wrong thing- and you'll be dead for the rest of your life.”

“Imagine how you’d feel if your whole life turned into a job you couldn’t stand.”

“Getting fired,’ Tyler says, ‘is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives.”