Chuck Palahniuk

“The future is just wasted on some people.”

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

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

“You only ask people about themselves so you can tell them about yourself.”

“When you understand, 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 just crumble up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we'll figure out who you're going to be.”

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”

“I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.”

“Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly.”

“But if you tell folks you're a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything and not have to know anything. Just say toxicology or marine biokinesis, and the person you're talking to will change the subject to himself. If this doesn't work, mention the neural synapses of embryonic pigeons.”

“Besides, it happens fast for some people and slow for some, accidents or gravity, but we all end up mutilated. Most women know this feeling of being more and more invisible everyday.”

“No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.This is all practice.”

“It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.”

“What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?”

“Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.”

“No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.”

“Find good in what the world says is evil.”

“It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.”

“Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?”

“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.”

“Your heart is my piñata.”

“Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.”

“You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.”

“Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against.”

“This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea that I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone.”

“If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?”

“The police are asking through the bedroom door, why did I make a batch of strawberry daiquiris before I called them?Because we were out of raspberries.Because, can't they see, it just does not matter. Time was not of the essence.”

“Me with nothing left to lose, plotting my big revenge in the spotlight. Give me violent revenge fantasies as a coping mechanism.”

“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

“Without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won't get any better.”

“When you think about it, Johnny Appleseed was a fucking ecological terrorist.”

“We went sailing one time, and he wore a Speedo, and any smart woman should know that means bisexual at least.”

“His computer password is "password.”

“That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.”

“I tiger can smileA snake will say it loves youLies make us evil”

“Worker bees can leave.Even drones can fly away.The Queen is their slave.”

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

“Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!”

“Scratch any fortune and you'll find blood only a generation or two back...child labor in mines or mills...Slavery. Drugs. Stock swindles. Wasting nature with clear-cuts, pollution, harvesting to extinction. Monopolies. Disease. War. Every fortune comes out of something unpleasant.”

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”

“We'll never be as young as we are tonight.”

“He was assaulting the world by assaulting himself.”

“Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.”

“Sorry, mom. Sorry, God.”

“Give me lust, baby.Flash.Give me malice.Flash.Give me detached existentialist ennui.Flash.Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.Flash.”

“Listen, now, you're going to die, Ray-mond K. K. K. Hessel, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. So lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. I don't give a shit. I have a gun.Finally, you were listening and coming out of the little tragedy in your head.Fill in the blank. What does Raymond Hessel want to be when he grows up?Go home, you said you just wanted to go home, please.No shit, I said. But after that, how did you want to spend your life? If you could do anything in the world.Make something up.You didn't know.Then you're dead right now, I said. I said, now turn your head.Death to commence in ten, in nine, in eight.A vet, you said. You want to be a vet, a veterinarian.You could be in school working your ass off, Raymond Hessel, or you could be dead. You choose. I stuffed your wallet into the back of your jeans. So you really wanted to be an animal doctor. I took the saltwater muzzle of the gun off one cheek and pressed it against another. Is that what you've always wanted to be, Dr. Raymond K. K. K. K. Hessel, a veterinarian?...So, I said, go back to school. If you wake up tomorrow morning, you find a way to get back into school.I have your license.I know who you are. I know where you live. I'm keeping your license, and I'm going to check on you, mister Raymond K. Hessel. In three months, and then six months, and then a year, and if you aren't back in school on your way to being a veterinarian, you will be dead...Raymond K. K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you've ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life.”

“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

“We wanted to blast the world free of history.... picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We'll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what's left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night.”

“I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.' A spinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined.”

“Reality means you live until you die...the real truth is nobody wants reality.”

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”