Chuck Palahniuk
Written in stolen moments under truck chassis and on park benches to a soundtrack of The Downward Spiral and Pablo Honey, Fight Club came into existence. The adaptation of Fight Club was a flop at the box office, but achieved cult status on DVD. The film’s popularity drove sales of the novel. Chuck put out two novels in 1999, Survivor and Invisible Monsters. Choke, published in 2001, became Chuck’s first New York Times bestseller. Chuck’s work has always been infused with personal experience, and his next novel, Lullaby, was no exception. Chuck credits writing Lullaby with helping him cope with the tragic death of his father. Diary and the non-fiction guide to Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, were released in 2003. While on the road in support of Diary, Chuck began reading a short story entitled 'Guts,' which would eventually become part of the novel Haunted.
In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed.
Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. These were 'How To' pieces, straight out of Chuck's personal bag of tricks, based on the tenants of minimalism he learned from Tom Spanbauer. Every month, a “Homework Assignment” would accompany the lesson, so Workshop members could apply what they had learned. (all 36 of these essays can currently be found on The Cult's sister-site, LitReactor.com).
Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. The best stories are currently set to be published in Burnt Tongues, a forthcoming anthology, with an introduction written by Chuck himself.
His next novel, Beautiful You, is due out in October 2014.
“There’s a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead. Your parents. Your doctor. Your therapist. Your caseworker. The sun’s outside the bathroom window trying to show us we’re all being stupid. All you have to do is look around.”
“It does not matter. The joke is we all have the same punch line.”
“Every last minute of my life has been preordained, and I’m sick and tired of it.”
“Ten years ago, he was the hardworking salt of the earth. All he wanted was to go to Heaven. Sitting here today, everything that he worked for in the world is lost. All his external rules and controls are gone.”
“It’s so obvious he’s trying to pass as a normal happy person.”
“Everything they believed in turned out to be wrong.”
“I want to tell them, stay in the cage. There are better things than freedom. There are worse things than living a long bored life in some stranger’s house and then dying and going to canary heaven.”
“Because nobody wants bad news.”
“The main thing I worry about in public is maybe people can tell I’m a survivor.”
“We were all so worried about our worst fears, squeezing frogs, eating worms, poisons, asbestos, we never considered how boring life would be even if we succeeded and got a good job.”
“With all the little facts we learned, we never had the time to think. None of us ever considered what life would be like cleaning up after a stranger every day. Washing dishes all day. Feeding a stranger’s children. Mowing a lawn. All day. Painting houses. Year after year.”
“We were kept busy learning. We had a million facts to remember.”
“There were jobs so boring, you’d find ways to cripple yourself so you couldn’t work.”
“Kill yourself or don’t kill yourself, but stop torturing me. I’m trying to move on with my life.”
“This is something I’ll go to Hell for.”
“Right now, me getting killed would be redundant.”
“Every phone call I get fills me with joy and terror since this could be the caseworker or the killer.”
“The secret is to not let your imagination get carried away.”
“I just didn’t want to be fixed.”
“Sure, I want to look like I’m worth the effort. Washed but not ironed. Clean but not polished. Confident but humble.”
“So here I am. This is as good as it gets. Take it or leave it.”
“The worst strategy I could pursue is self-improvement.”
“I don’t want her falling in love with me as a voice on the phone while at the same time she’s trying to ditch me as a real person.”
“Jump ahead ten years, and not much has changed. Ten years of therapy, and I’m still in about the same place. This probably isn’t something we should celebrate.”
“The easy thing to do was give her the benefit of the doubt.”
“Your name told you just how your life would go.”
“A year could pass between her asking a question and my answer.”
“That’s what I tell people. My official version of the truth.”
“The world can be a lot better than we settle for. All you have to do is ask.”
“Then all you can do is get lost in the tiny details of every day doing the same tasks over and over.”
“Call me the voice of experience.”
“Most everything else I know is from the messes these people leave behind.”
“The only thing I know is everything you love will die.”
“My goldfish and me, both of us are just here swimming in one place.”
“We’re all miserable together.”
“It’s not that I want to get married. I admire guys who can commit to a tattoo.”
“This isn’t such a beautiful world that he has to stay in it and suffer. This isn’t much of a world at all.”
“He can’t live with knowing the future and not being able to save anyone.”
“If you’re listening to this, you know that I’m dead.”
“There’s always the chance you could die right in the middle of your life story.”
“So why do you want to die so bad?”
“Don’t quote me on any of this. It’s been a long time since I’ve been tested”
“You just don’t know what I’ve been through this past year.”
“Committing suicide just seemed to be another aggressive plan to fix her life.”
“If you ask me, reincarnation is just another way to procrastinate.”
“Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.”
“Trikloroetan… Yaptığım bütün kapsamlı testler gösterdi ki, aşırı derecede bilgili olmanın en iyi tedavisi bu. En büyük amaç bu. Bilgiyi tedavi etmek… Adem ile Havva’nın incil’deki hikayesinden beri insanlık biraz fazla akıllı oldu. …şu elmayı yediklerinden beri… Şu beyin koreksi, yani cerebellum ...işte sorun orda... İnsan eğer sadece beyin sapını kullanarak yaşayabilseymiş, sorun ortadan kalkarmış. Balıkların psikolojik olarak ıstırap çektiklerini göremezsiniz. Süngerler asla kötü bir gün geçirmezler. Amacım hayatımı basitleştirmeye çalışmak değil. Amacım kendimi basitleştirmek… Her bağımlılık aynı sorunu çözmek için bulunmuş bir yöntemdir. Uyuşturucular, obezite, alkol veya seks, huzuru bulmak için kullanılan farklı yöntemlerdi. Bildiklerimizden kaçmak için, eğitimimizden, elmayı ısırmış olmaktan.”
“And if I do fall asleep, Marla has to keep track of Tyler. Where he goes. What he does. So maybe during the day, I can rush around and undo the damage.”
“What makes the earth feel like hell is our expectation that it ought to feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Hell is hell. Now, stop with the whining and caterwauling.”
“The best fiction rises – yes, like a phoenix – out of the ashes of people’s sad, true disasters. We write in order to repeat the past.”