Chuck Palahniuk

“Three weeks and I hadn't slept. Three weeks without sleep, and everything becomes an out-of-body-experience. My doctor said, "Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what's actually wrong. Listen to your body."I just wanted to sleep. I wanted little blue Amytal Sodium capsules, 200-milligram-sized. I wanted red-and-blue Tuinal bullet capsules, lipstick-red Seconal.”

“The first group I went to, there were introductions: this is Alice, this is Brenda, this is Dover. Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.”

“This should be my favorite part, being held and crying with Big Bob without hope. We all work so hard all the time. This is the only place I ever really relax and give up.”

“When you look for these support groups, they all have vague upbeat names. My Thursday evening group for blood parasites, it's called Free and Clear.”

“This is when I'd cry because right now, your life comes down to nothing, and not even nothing, oblivion.”

“You take enough blasting gelatin and wrap the foundation columns of anything, you can topple any building in the world. You have to tamp it good and tight with sandbags so the blast goes against the column and not out into the parking garage around the column.This how-to stuff isn't in any history book.”

“What kind of dining set defines me as a person?”

“Find what you're afraid of most and go live there.”

“Peter used to say that an artist’s job is to make order out of chaos. You collect details, look for a pattern, and organize. You make sense out of senseless facts. You puzzle together bits of everything. You shuffle and reorganize. Collage. Montage. Assemble.”

“Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations.”

“We, each of us, can take control of the world.”

“If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you.”

“I am Joe's Complete Lack of Surprise.”

“Watching white moon faceThe stars never feel angerBlah, blah, blah, the end”

“Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.”

“A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”

“Why is it that I occur as a story to everyone except myself?”

“So if reality is all a spell, and you don't really want what you think you want... If you have no free will. You don't really know what you know. You don't really love who you only think you love. What do you have left to live for?”

“Clothing is dishonesty in its purest form.”

“A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world.”

“Put the gun to my head and paint walls with my brains.”

“Many people have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.”

“I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”

“According lecture, entire effort United States to incite desire, inflict want, inspire demand.”

“I'm giving you my life to prove to myself I can, I really can love somebody. Even when I'm not getting paid, I can give love and happiness and charm. You see, I can handle the baby food and the not talking and being homeless and invisible, but I have to know that I can love somebody. Completely and totally, permanently and without hope of reward, just as an act of will, I will love somebody.”

“It's just such a big commitment," Brandy says, "being a girl, you know. Forever."Taking the hormones. For the rest of her life. The pills, the patches, the injections, for the rest of her life. And what if there wassomeone, just one person who would love her, who could make her life happy, just the way she was, without the hormones and make-up and the clothes and shoes and surgery? She has to at least look around the world a little.”

“And maybe men say they're glad not to give birth, all the pain and blood, but really that's just so much sour grapes. For sure, men can't do anything near as incredible. Upper body strength, abstract thought, phalluses—any advantages men appear to have are pretty token.You can't even hammer a nail with a phallus.”

“These old people. These human ruins.”

“When you understand," Brandy says, "that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the storyyou're telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan," Brandy says, "then we'll figure outwho you're going to be.”

“...no way could I fall in love. I just couldn't go there yet. Settle for less. I didn't want to process through anything. I didn't want to pick up any pieces. Lower my expectations.”

“Too much school.""Would you rather be dead?! Would you rather die? Here, on your knees in the back of a convenience store?!”

“I suppose it’s a comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse damage to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict.”

“I'm living the life I love, I tell myself, and loving the life I live. I tell myself: I deserved this.This is exactly what I wanted.”

“The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate. Let Big Brother do the singing and dancing for you. Be a reporter. Be a good witness. A grateful member of theaudience.”

“Ciò che vi blocca qui dentro è ciò che blocca l'intera vostra vita". L'aria sarà sempre troppo carica di qualcosa. Il vostro corpo sempre troppo indolenzito o stanco. Vostro padre, sempre troppo ubriaco. Vostra moglie sempre troppo fredda. Avrete sempre una qualche scusa per non vivere la vostra vita.”

“Next, I'm holding a bag of clothes, being herded toward an open door filled with sunlight. My briefs are still looped around my ankles, so I'm waddling, my erection swinging in front of me like a blind man's cane, and the talent wrangler has the nerve to say, 'Thank you for coming...”

“My best work is not behind me! He yells, You know, "nobody does a better split-reed standing anal with an on-demand hands-free pop-shot release.”

“True fact”

“Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.”

“So you're the winner of this game show," Seth says, "and you get a choice between a five-piece living room set from Broyhill, suggested retail price three thousand dollars— or—a ten-day trip to the old world charm of Europe." Most people, Seth says, would take the living room set. "It's just that people want something to show for their effort," Seth says. "Like the pharaohs and their pyramids.”

“This makeover would make piercings and tattoos and brandings look so lame, all those little fashion revolts so safe that they themselves only become fashionable. Those little paper tiger attempts to reject looking good that only end up reinforcing it.”

“He was the kind of boy any young girl should date while she's still able to recover.”

“Suicide is very contagious.”

“You have to jump into disaster with both feet.”

“When it comes to choosing a savior, they won't settle for just a human being.”

“You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble”

“La forma que tiene la gente de reclamar para sí a un ser querido es ponerle un nombre que solo hacen servir ellas. Ponerle una etiqueta para apropiárselo.”

“My stomach hurts, but if it's guilt or impacted stool, I can't tell. Either way, I'm so full of shit.”

“And maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”

“Here are condoms lined with a topical anesthetic for prolonged action. What a paradox. You don't feel a thing, but you can fuck for hours.”