Chuck Palahniuk

“In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was kind of tumbler. The sale as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. This isn't suffering. It's erosion.”

“Gdy siedzę w korku, serce bije mi z normalną szybkością. Nie jestem sam. Utknąwszy tam, mogę uchodzić za normalnego człowieka, który wraca do żony i dzieci, który ma dom. Mogę udawać, że moje życie jest czymś więcej niż tylko czekaniem na kolejną katastrofę. Że wiem, jak funkcjonować. Tak samo, jak dzieci bawią się w dom.”

“Cały świat poszatkowany opłotkami i ograniczeniami szybkości, podzielony na strefy, obłożony podatkami i regulacjami prawnymi, a wszyscy zarejestrowani, pod kontrolą, znani z adresu i nagrań. I gdzie tu miejsce na przygodę, no chyba że taką, którą da się kupić? Na kolejce górskiej. W kinie. Przecież wiadomo, że dinozaury nie pożrą dzieci. Publiczność na pokazach próbnych wykluczyła możliwość wszelkich poważnych katastrof. A skoro szansa na realną katastrofę, realne ryzyko, nie istnieje, nie mamy też szansy na realne zbawianie. Realne porywy. Realne podniecenie. Na frajdę. Odkrycie. Innowację.Prawo, dzięki któremu jesteśmy bezpieczni, to samo prawo skazuje nas na nudę.Nie mając dostępu do prawdziwego chaosu, nigdy nie osiągniemy prawdziwego pokoju.Oby nie było gorzej, bo lepiej nie będzie.”

“So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn’t funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it. That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can’t control life, at least you can control your version.”

“We, Brandy and Alfa and me, we've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.I have no native tongue.”

“That old saying, how you always kill the one you love, well, look, it works both ways.”

“They told me that nothing was a sin, just a poor life choice. Poor impulse control. That nothing is evil. Any concept of right versus wrong, according to them, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. They said that if anything should force us to modify our personal behavior it should be our allegiance to a social contract, not some vague, externally imposed threat of flaming punishment.”

“To both my parents, the world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard.”

“At the last minute, I couldn't wear the Hitler mustache because Tiger Stripe ate it; and then I didn't want to take my kitty and risk his coughing up some big Nazi hairball on someone's front stoop.”

“My mom would spy by satellite, turning down the air conditioning, colder and colder, with a tapping keystroke via her wireless connection, chilling that house, that one room, meat locker cold, ski-slope cold, spending a king's ransom on Freon and electric power, trying to make some doomed ten bucks' worth of pretty pink flowers last one more day.”

“Rachel hadn’t invented the dangers of toxoplasmosis; she’d gone online and built an airtight case. This wasn’t crazy talk. Neurobiologists had linked T. gondii to suicide and the onset of schizophrenia. All caused by exposure to cat poop. Some studies even suggested that the toxo brain parasites chemically coerced people to adopt more cats. Those crazy cat ladies were actually being controlled by an infection of single-cell invaders.”

“But I don't want to go back. Not yet.Just because.Because every once in a while, somebody brings me my lunch tray and my meds and he has a black eye or his forehead is swollen with stitches, and he says:"We miss you Mr. Durden."Or somebody with a broken nose pushes a mop past me and whispers:"Everything's going according to the plan.Whispers"We're going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world."Whispers"We look forward to getting you back.”

“Tanrının yarattığı başka bir canlıyı sevmem ve sevmeyi ogrenmem için ailem bana yıllar önce ilk balığımı almıştı. Sahip olduğum 640 baliktan sonra oğrendiğim tek şey insanin sevdiği herşeyin bir gün öleceği oluyor. Özel kişiyle karşılaştığın ilk anda onun bir gün olup toprağın altına gireceğinden emin olabilirsin.”

“Somehow it seems wrong to photograph a blind person. It’s like stealing something valuable they don’t even know they own.”

“And if Christ had died from a barbiturate overdose, alone on the bathroom floor, would he be in heaven?”

“The problem with educating stupid people was that they didn’t know they were stupid. The same went for curing crazy people.”

“Old George Orwell got it backward. 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.”

“Peter used to say, "The only thing an artist can do is describe his own face." You're doomed to being you. This, he says, leaves su free to draw anything, since we're only drawing ourselves. Your handwriting. The way you walking. 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.”

“The evil queen was stupid to play Snow White's game. There's an age where a woman has to move on to another kind of power. Money, for example. Or a gun.”

“We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.”

“You are permanent, but this life is not.”

“La gente está siempre dispuesta a creer lo contrario de lo que cuentas.”

“When you don't share your problems, you resent hearing the problems of other people.”

“Your folks are god, you love them and you want to make them happy but you still want to make up your own rules.”

“We are all connected on the inside. Your ass is just the far end of your mouth.”

“A moment is all you can expect from perfection.”

“This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and nothing can touch you”

“Where would Jesus be if no one ever wrote the gospels?”

“The whole world is a disaster waiting to happen.”

“No matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.”

“Prepare to evacuate soul in ten, in nine, eight.Chloe's splashing through the ankle-deep back-up of renal fluid from her failed kidneys.Death will commence in five.Five, four.Around her, a parasitic life spray paints her heart.Four, three.Three, two.Chloe climbs hand-over-hand up the curled lining of her own throat.Death to commence in three, two.Moonlight shines in through the open mout...h.Prepare for the last breath, now.Evacuate.Now.Soul clear of body.Death commences.Now.”

“When you’re twenty-four,” Marla says, “you have no idea how far you can really fall, but I was a fast learner.”

“The crap and the trash of the world. Post-consumer human butt wipe that no one would ever go to the trouble to recycle.”

“The bad news is we don't have any control.The good news is we can't make any mistakes.”

“You've never seen a crucifix with a Jesus who wasn't almost naked. You've never seen a fat Jesus. Or a Jesus with body hair. Every crucifix you've ever seen, the Jesus could be shirtless and modeling designer jeans or men's cologne.”

“The same as if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, you realize, if no one had been there to witness the agony of Christ, would we be saved?The key to salvation is how much attention you get. How high a profile you get. Your audience share. Your exposure. Your name recognition. Your press following.The buzz.”

“Where I'm is one of those stair climbing machines the agent has installed. You climb and climb forever and never get off the ground. You're trapped in your hotel room. It's the mystical sweat love lodge experience of our time, the only sort of Indian vision quest we can schedule into our daily planner.Our StairMaster to Heaven.”

“There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead.”

“One day the wickedness of the kings of the world would destroy us, oh sorrow, and armies of the world would march upon us, wailing, and the purest of the children of God would have to deliver themselves unto the Lord by their own hand.The Deliverance.”

“Where we're at right here is the beginning of the end.”

“In the wicked outside world, my brother told me, there were sins the church didn't know enough to forbid. I couldn't wait.”

“Right now, me getting killed would be redundant....You could stab a knife right through my heart and you'd be too late....Right now, getting killed would be a breath of spring.”

“The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.”

“Because the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.”

“Throughout history the most powerful rulers have been sex maniacs. And he asks, does their sex appetite come from having power, or does their will for power come from their sex appetite?”

“We're all going overnight express delivery straight to Hell.”

“It felt good to stand out from the world, just mysterious and pious. You weren't a lantern under any basquet. You stood out righteous as a sore thumb. You were the one holy man to keep God from crushing all of the Sodom and Gomorrah seething around you in the Valley Plaza Shoping Center.”

“How I feel is cheap and used, dirty and humiliated. Dirty and tricked and thrown away.”

“In the outside world, my brother told me, people were as reckless as animals and fornicated with strangers on the street.”

“Today is just one of those days the sun comes out to really humiliate you.”