Chuck Palahniuk

“I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions, because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”

“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.”

“The magic of sex is it's acquisition without the burden of possession. No matter how many women you take home, there's never a storage problem.”

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

“What we don't understand we can make mean anything.”

“I'm the dick that killed Cassie Lynn Wright.”

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

“A cash-bought merit badge ain't worth shit.”

“Sobriety is okay enough," Denny says, "but someday, I'd like to live a life based on doing good stuff instead of just not doing bad stuff. You know?”

“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.”

“Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you--do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?”

“A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to produce a risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book. . . . A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a "mass medium." No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades.”

“Inside me is the same desperate hope I have watching the ravenous dead and thinking, Oh please, oh please, oh please.The craving inside of me is to be clutched at by some dead girl. To put my ear to her chest and hear nothing. Even getting munched on by zombies beats the idea that I'm only flesh and blood, skin and bone. Demon or angel or evil spirit, I just need something to show itself. Ghoulie or ghosty or long-legged beastie, I just want my hand held.”

“Self improvement is masturbation...”

“I'm a toxic waste byproduct of God's creation.”

“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?”

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

“It's not love or anything, but I think I like you, too.”

“One minute was enough, Tyler said, "A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”

“Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”

“Fuck me. I'm so tired of being me. Me beautiful. Me ugly. Blonde. Brunette. A million fucking fashion makeovers that only leave me trapped being me.Who I was before the accident is just a story now. Everything before now, before now, before now, is just a story I carry around. I guess that would apply to anybody in the world. What I need is a new story about who I am.What I need to do is fuck up so bad I can't save myself.”

“So maybe I'll spend some years in prison, but you'll have a big head start on me in hell!”

“Could you hold the chainsaw a bit closer to your mouth, please?”

“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.”

“I am an invisible monster, and I am incapable of loving anybody. You don't know which is worse.”

“I still love him so much I'll hide any amount of conjugated estrogen in his food. So much I'll do anything to destroy him.”

“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.”

“You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece.”

“Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.”

“Being tired isn't the same as being rich, but most times it's close enough.”

“If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't.”

“Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”

“I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.”

“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't 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.”

“La repetición es la madre de todos los talentos.”

“La historia no es más que una sucesión de monstruos o de víctimas. O de testigos.”

“Hay gente que nace humana. Al resto nos cuesta toda la vida conseguirlo.”

“Cada uno es su hobby favorito. Uno siempre es experto en uno mismo. ”

“Por mucha bendición que haya, o talento, o tecnología, siempre podemos encontrar la forma de cagarla”

“Si tal vez no necesitáramos de un personaje mítico y salvaje para representar nuestras vidas en proceso de desaparición. ”

“A veces la muerte de una sola persona puede justificar la muerte de una cultura entera.”

“We just had a near-life experience!”

“En un mundo donde millones de personas creen que su deidad concibió un hijo mortal con una humana virgen, es asombrosa la poca imaginación que muestra la mayoría de la gente.”

“El futuro que tendrás mañana no es el mismo futuro que tenías ayer.”

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

“People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.”

“The idea that I can't share my problems with other people makes me not give a shit about their problems.”

“At this rate, we'll never get to the future.”

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

“We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”