Chuck Palahniuk

“No sin, no crime, then extinction not earned.”

“This is passive-aggression in action.”

“your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.”

“you're doomed at being you.”

“the world is the cradle and your trap.”

“The photographer in my head says:Give me peace.Flash.Give me release.Flash.”

“On game shows, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer and dryer pair.”

“Tell the world what scares you most. Save the world with some advice from the future.”

“you can't escape the world, and you're not responsible for how you look, if you look beauticious or butt ugly. you're not responsible for how you feel or what you say or how you act or anything you do. it's all out of your hands.”

“There is nothing special in the world. nothing magic. just physics.”

“you're a product just as much. a product of a product. the people who design cars, they're products, your teachers, products. the minister in your church, another product.”

“Sometimes your best way to deal with shit is not to hold yourself as such a precious little prize.”

“I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.”

“Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history’s in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.”

“Jesteśmy niekochanymi dziećmi historii, wychowanymi na telewizji, która przez lata wmawiała nam, że pewnego dnia zostaniemy milionerami i gwiazdami filmowymi, i gwiazdami rocka, ale tak się nie stanie. I to właśnie teraz do nas dociera. Więc nie zadzieraj z nami.”

“Mylife might be little and boring, but at least it’s mine - not some assembly-line, secondhand, hand-me-down life.”

“That big glorious mountain. For one transitory moment, I think I may have actually seen it”. For one flash, the Mommy had seen the mountain without thinking of logging and ski resorts and avalanches, managed wildlife, plate tectonic geology, microclimates, rain shadow, or yin-yang locations. She’d seen the mountain without the framework of language. Without the cage of associations. She’d seen it without looking through the lens of everything she knew was true about mountains. What she’d seen in that flash wasn’t even a “mountain”. It wasn’t a natural resource. It had no name. “That’s the big goal”, she said. “To find a cure for knowledge”. For education. For living in our heads. Ever since the story of Adam and Eve in the bible, humanity had been a little too smart for its own good, the Mommy said. Ever since eating that apple. Her goal was to find, if not a cure, then at least a treatment that would give people back their innocence. “The cerebral cortex, the cerebellum”, she said, “that’s where your problem is”. If she could just get down to using only her brain stem, she’d be cured. This would be somewhere beyond happiness and sadness. You don’t see fish agonized by wild mood swings. Sponges never have a bad day.”

“Besides, hysteria is only possible with an audience.”

“My point is, that if I'm honest, my life is all about me.”

“Skin, bones, blood and organs transplant from person to person. Even what’s inside you already, the colonies of microbes and bugs that eat your food for you, without them you’d die. Nothing of you is all-the-way yours. All of you is inherited.Whatever you’re thinking, a million other folks are thinking. Whatever you do, they’re doing, and none of you is responsible. All of you is a cooperative effort.”

“Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better.”

“A book is as private and consensual as sex.”

“Now," those Plumbago lips say, "You are going to tell me your story like you just did. Write it all down. Tell that story over and over. Tell me your sad-assed story all night." That Brandy queen points a long bony finger at me."When you understand, " Brandy says, "that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan," Brandy says,"then we'll figure out who you're going to be.”

“you ever been trapped in a world where you're everyone's worst nightmare?”

“Some people still think knowledge is power.”

“Big Brother fills us all with the same crap. My guess is he was clever the same way everybody thinks they're clever. I tell her to type in 'password”

“Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?”

“Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a computer disk. Burning a Book. Probably that goes for killing anybody in the world. We're all such products.”

“Oh love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me. I'll be anybody you want me to be.”

“At some point, Wax mentioned how appalling it seemed that those brilliant minds who could invent miracle medicines and nuclear fission and dazzling computer special effects, they had such a complete lack of imagination when it came to spending their money: granite countertops and luxury cars. Talking about that stuff, Wax driving, the madder he got, you could watch the speedo creep up past eighty, ninety, a hundred. ”

“Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies. The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.”

“Each holiday tradition acts as an exercise in cognitive development, a greater challenge for the child. Despite the fact most parents don't recognize this function, they still practice the exercise. Rant also saw how resolving the illusions is crucial to how the child uses any new skills. A child who is never coached with Santa Claus may never develop an ability to imagine. To him, nothing exists except the literal and tangible. A child who is disillusioned abruptly, by his peers or siblings, being ridiculed for his faith and imagination, may choose never to believe in anything- tangible or intangible- again. To never trust or wonder.But a child who relinquishes the illusions of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, that child may come away with the most important skill set. That child may recognize the strength of his own imagination and faith. He will embrace the ability to create his own reality. That child becomes his own authority. He determines the nature of his world. His own vision. And by doing so, by the power of his example, he determines the reality of the other two types: those who can't imagine, and those who can't trust. ”

“We all have this moment, when your folks first see you as someone not growing up to be them.”

“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 would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.”

“By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child's faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust in a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money. From a man to an animal to a fairy. From toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairy-dom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels... dimes... and quarters. In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency. ”

“The books on plastic surgery, the pamphlets and brochures all promised to help me live a more normal, happy life; but less and less, this looked like what I'd want. What I wanted looked more and more like what I'd always been trained to want. What everybody wants.Give me attention.Flash.Give me beauty.Flash.Give me peace and happiness, a loving relationship, and a perfect home.Flash.Brandy says, "The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger."She says, "Don't do what you want." She says, "Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want."It's the opposite of following your bliss.Brandy tells me, "Do the things that scare you the most.”

“Tell the world what scares you the most” says Brandy.She gives us each an Aubergine Dreams eyebrow pencil and says “Save the world with some advice from the future”Seth writes on the back of a card and hands the card to Brandy for her to read. On game shows, Brandy reads, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer dryer pair.”Brandy puts a big Plumbago kiss in the little square for the stamp and lets the wind lift and card and sail it off toward the towers of downtown Seattle.Seth hands her another, and Brandy reads:Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random useless facts that are all we have left from our education”A kiss and the card’s on it’s way toward Lake Washington.From Seth: When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”A kiss and it’s off on the wind toward Ballard.Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”Interstate 5 snakes by in the distance. From high atop the Space Needle, the southbound lanes are red chase lights, and the northbound lanes are white chase lights. I take a card and write:I love Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I overcompensate by worshipping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again.Beandy is waiting to rake the card and read it out loud. Brandy’s waiting to read my worst fears to the world, but I don’t give her the card. I kiss it myself with the lips I don’t have and let the wind take it out of my hand. The card flies up, up, up to the stars and then falls down to land in the suicide net. While I watch my future trapped in the suicide net Brandy reads another card from Seth.We are all self-composting”I write another card from the future and Brandy reads it:When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves”An updraft lifts up my worst fears from the suicide net and lifts them away.Seth writes and Brandy reads.You have to keep recycling yourself”.I write and Brandy reads.Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.” I write and Brandy reads.The one you love and the one who loves you are never ever the same person.”

“What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we cant decipher. What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. There is only the inevitable.”

“Rant said that view of time was set up so folks won't live forever. It's the planned obsolescence we've all agreed to...'Nothing says you have to swallow this,' Rant told me. 'You can always just die.”

“Why should I believe any of this?' It happens that fast. I say, because I think I like you. Marla says, 'Not love?'This is a cheesy enough moment, I say. Don't push it.”

“You have to keep recycling yourself.”

“People will listen to you only when they know you're dying, otherwise they're just waiting for their turn to talk.”

“The truth is you can be orphaned again and again and again. The truth is, you will be. And the secret is, this will hurt less and less each time until you can't feel a thing. Trust me on this.”

“Given the choice between grabbing a strange tongue and watching a monster poop into a giant snail shell, the face retreats and slams the door behind it.”

“After a good-looking boy gives you rabies two, three times, you'll settle down and marry somebody less exciting for the rest of your life”

“You tell yourself that noise is what defines silence. Without noise, silence would not be golden. Noise is the exception. Think of deep outer space, the incredible cold and quiet where your wife and kid wait. Silence, not heaven, would be reward enough.”

“You turn up your music to hide the noise. Other people turn up their music to hide yours. You turn up yours again. Everyone buy s a bigger stereo system. This is the arms race of sound. You don't win with a lot of treble.”

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

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