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A Good Story Isn't The One That Shuts Everyone Down And Sort Of Leaves Them In Silent Awe. A Good Story Is One That, Even Before You Finish The Anecdote, You Can See Their Eyes Shining Because It Has So Resonated With Something From Their Own Lives That Everyone In The Group Has A Version Of The Same Story And They Cannot Wait To Tell It, And That They're Going To Compete To Make Their Version Even More Extreme Than Your Version. So Your Version Is Just A Seed.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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A Good Story Isn't

Chuck Palahniuk

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A Good Story Isn't The One That Shuts Everyone Down And Sort Of Leaves Them In Silent Awe. A Good Story Is One That, Even Before You Finish The Anecdote, You Can See Their Eyes Shining Because It Has So Resonated With Something From Their Own Lives That Everyone In The Group Has A Version Of The Same Story And They Cannot Wait To Tell It, And That They're Going To Compete To Make Their Version Even More Extreme Than Your Version. So Your Version Is Just A Seed.

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It Only Takes One Mistake,' The Dan Banyan Guy Says, 'and Nothing Else You Ever Do Will Matter.' With His Empty Hand, He Takes One Of My Hands. His Fingers Feel Hot, Fever-hot, And Pounding With His Heartbeats. He Turns My Hand Palm-up Saying, 'no Matter How Hard You Work Or How Smart You Become, You'll Always Be Known For That One Poor Choice.' He Sets The Blue Pill On My Palm, Saying, 'do That One Wrong Thing- And You'll Be Dead For The Rest Of Your Life.

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.

A Child Who Is Disillusioned Abruptly, By His Peers Or Siblings, Being Ridiculed For His Faith And Imagination, May Choose Never To Believe In Anything- Tangible Or Intangible- Again. To Never Trust Or Wonder.

We Don't Have A Great War In Our Generation, Or A Great Depression, But We Do, We Have A Great War Of The Spirit. We Have A Great Revolution Against The Culture. The Great Depression Is Our Lives. We Have A Spiritual Depression.

Every Time We Burn A Gallon Of Gas Or An Acre Of Rain Forest, Aren't We Killing The Future To Preserve The Present?

You Think Maybe If You Just Work Harder And Faster, You Can Hold Off The Chaos, But Then One Day You’re Changing A Patio Light Bulb With A Five-year Life Span And You Realize How You’ll Only Be Changing This Light Maybe Ten More Times Before You’ll Be Dead.

The Answer Is There Is No Answer.

At Some Point, Your Memories, Your Stories, Your Adventures, Will Be The Only Things You'll Have Left.

Personal Identity Seems Like It's Just Such An American Archetype, From Holly Golightly Re-inventing Herself In 'breakfast At Tiffany's' To Jay Gatsby In 'the Great Gatsby.' It Seems Like The Sort Of Archetypal American Issue. If You're Given The Freedom To Be Anything, Or Be Anyone, What Do You Do With It?

You Hear The Best Stories From Ordinary People. That Sense Of Immediacy Is More Real To Me Than A Lot Of Writerly, Literary-type Crafted Stories. I Want That Immediacy When I Read A Novel.

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My Books Do Have A Sort Of Romantic Community At The End - People Coming Together. But On A More Basic Level, I Always See Them As Being About Power, In The Same Way That Harry Potter Books Are Pitched To A Population Of Young People Who Really Have No Power.

Generations Have Been Working In Jobs They Hate, Just So They Can Buy What They Don't Really Need.

When I First Started Writing, There Was No Way I'd Write A Sex Scene. That Just Seemed Impossible. That's Why In "fight Club" All The Sex Happens Off-screen. It's All Just A Noise On The Other Side Of The Wall Or The Ceiling. I Just Couldn't Bring To Write In A Scene Like That. So One Of The Challenges With "choke" Was I Wanted To Write Sex Scenes Until I Was Really Comfortable Just Writing Them In A Very Mechanical Way.

Skinny Guys Fight Till They're Burger.

If You're Not Drunk And Half Naked By This Point, You're Not Paying Attention.

The Truth Is, Immigrants Tend To Be More American Than People Born Here.

The Weather Today Is An Increasing Trend Towards Denial.

May I Never Be Complete. May I Never Be Content. May I Never Be Perfect.

A Writer's Job Is To Cultivate What Can Go Wrong. You're Always Looking For That Dramatic Arc Of Where Things Can Fail.

If You Don’t Claim Your Humanity, You Will Become A Statistic.

Quitting Your Job

We Want You, Not Your Money. As Long As You're At Fight Club, You're Not How Much Money You've Got In The Bank. You're Not Your Job. You're Not Your Family, And You're Not Who You Tell Yourself. You're Not Your Name. You're Not Your Problems. You're Not Your Age. You Are Not Your Hopes. You Will Not Be Saved. We Are All Going To Die, Someday.

I Want You To Invent It. I Want You To Have That Skill. To Create Your Own Reality. Your Own Set Of Laws. I Want To Try And Teach You That.

Her Voice Makes Me Think Of Her Mouth Makes Me Think Of Her Breath Makes Me Think Of Her Breasts.

I'm Only Confrontational With My Friends.

I'm Not Sure What We're Running From. Nobody. Or The Future. Fate. Growing Up. Getting Old. Picking Up The Pieces. As If Running We Won't Have To Get On With Our Lives.

You Are Permanent, But This Life Is Not.

More And More, The Hardest Part Of Crying Is When I Can't Stop.

The Laws That Keep Us Safe, These Same Laws Condemn Us To Boredom.

"getting Fired," Tyler Says, "is The Best Thing That Could Happen To Any Of Us. That Way, We’d Quit Treading Water And Do Something With Our Lives."

Everybody Looks A Little Crazy If You're Looking Close Enough And If You Can't Look That Close, Then You Don't Really Love Them.

I'm Always Looking For Context In Which People Tell Stories. In "fight Club" It's These Support Groups For Dying People, And Then In "choke" It's 12-step Recovery Groups. In One Novel It's Artists' Colonies, In Another Novel It's A Diary Form That Submariners' Wives Typically Keep So That When Their Husband Comes Back From Serving On A Submarine They Have An Accounting Of Their Spouse's Time. So I'm Always Looking For, Number One, A Non-fiction Context - Because You Can Tell A More Outrageous Story If You Use A Non-fiction Form.

If People Thought You Were Dying, They Gave You Their Full Attention.

Nobody's Told Me Anything To Date That I've Been Completely Reviled By.

The Lower You Fall, The Higher You'll Fly. The Farther You Run, The More God Wants You Back.

I Will Never Write A Sequel To Anything That I Will Ever Write.

Does It Hurt Very Much To Die? Well, Sweetheart, Yes, But It Hurts A Lot More To Keep Living.

I Used To Work In A Funeral Home To Feel Good About Myself, Just The Fact That I Was Breathing.

Your Folks Are God, You Love Them And You Want To Make Them Happy But You Still Want To Make Up Your Own Rules.

Tyler Lies Back And Asks, "if Marilyn Monroe Were Alive Right Now, What Would She Be Doing?" I Say, Goodnight. The Headliner Hangs Down In Shreds From The Ceiling And Tyler Says, "clawing At The Lid Of Her Coffin.

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The World Will Always Punish The Few People With Special Talents The Rest Of Us Don’t Recognize As Real.

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Maybe This Is Why Misty Loved Him. Loved You. Because You Believed In Her So Much More Than She Did. You Expected More From Her Than She Did From Herself.

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The World Is The Cradle And Your Trap.

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Me With Nothing Left To Lose, Plotting My Big Revenge In The Spotlight. Give Me Violent Revenge Fantasies As A Coping Mechanism.

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You Love Me. You Ignore Me. You Save My Life, Then You Cook My Mother Into Soap.

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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.

It's Funny How The Beauty Of Art Has So Much More To Do With The Frame Than The Artwork Itself.

As We Grow Older I Always Think, Why Didn't I Do More When I Was Young, Why Didn't I Risk More?

I Don't Remember The Hotel Rooms Or The Airports But I Always Remember The Events.

Just For The Record, The Weather Today Is Increasing Turmoil With A Possible Physical And Emotional Breakdown.

Do We Have Free Will, Or Do The Mass Media And Our Culture Control Us, Our Desires And Actions, From The Moment We’re Born?

Most Guys Will Fight To Know You. Some Guys Will Deny You're A Real Person, And Some Will Just Ignore You." The Zealot. The Atheist. The Agnostic.

This Isn't About Love As In Caring. This Is About Property As In Ownership.

Property Ownership

The Religious School She Went To, Growing Up, Ms. Wright Said How All The Girls Had To Wear A Scarf Tied To Cover Their Ears At All Times. Based On The Biblical Idea That The Virgin Mary Became Pregnant When The Holy Spirit Whispered In Her Ear. The Idea That Ears Were Vaginas. That, Hearing Just One Wrong Idea, You Lost Your Innocence. One Detail Too Many And You’d Be Ruined. Overdosed On Information.

You Always Kill The One You Love.

I Was Tired And Crazy And Rushed, And Every Time I Boarded A Plane, I Wanted The Plane To Crash. I Envied People Dying Of Cancer. I Hated My Life. I Was Tired And Bored With My Job And My Furniture, And I Couldn’t See Any Way To Change Things. Only End Them.

With Insomnia, You're Never Really Awake; But You're Never Really Asleep.

Seek Midday Nourishment. Visit Memorial Acclaimed War Hero Colonel Sanders.

You Have To Jump Into Disaster With Both Feet.

Invisible Monsters

The Strength Of Film Is Its Accessibility And Immediacy. But The Strength Of Books Is That Freedom To Really Depict Anything You Want Because People Are Going To Be Reading It In Private. So, I'm Always Trying To Write With The Immediacy And The Constant Motion Of Film But I'm Also Trying To Write With The Complete Freedom Of Subject Matter That Books Have.

Until You Find Something To Fight For, You Settle For Something To Fight Against.

Those Who Remember The Past Tend To Get The Story Really Screwed Up.

When You're Thinking About The Rest Of Your Life, You're Never Really Thinking More Than A Couple Years Down The Road.

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.

I Think In A Way, You're Doomed, Once You Can Envision Something. You're Sort Of Doomed To Make It Happen. I've Found That The Moment I Can Envision Leaving A Relationship, That's Usually The Moment That The Relationship Starts To Fall Apart.

Maybe We Should Always Assume The Worst.

Do You Remember When You Were 10 Or 11 Years Old And You Really Thought Your Folks Were The Best? They Were Completely Omniscient And You Took Their Word For Everything. And Then You Got Older And You Went Through This Hideous Age When Suddenly They Were The Devil, They Were Bullies, And They Didn't Know Anything.

You Have A Choice. Live Or Die. Every Breath Is A Choice. Every Minute Is A Choice. Every Time You Don't Throw Yourself Down The Stairs, That's A Choice. Every Time You Don't Crash Your Car, You Re-enlist.

Idiot People Like Angel Delaporte Who Look For A Supernatural Reason For Ordinary Events, Those People Drive Misty Nuts.

I Always Really Curious To See How People Interpret Things. I Know My Version, And I'm Kind Of Bored With My Version So I Want To See Their Version.

He Was The Kind Of Boy Any Young Girl Should Date While She's Still Able To Recover.

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.

Jump To The Day We'll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter. Jump To The Day Another House Will Stand Here And The People Living There Won't Know We Ever Happened.

If Anything I Try To Write Something That Would Be More Difficult To Film. I Tend To See Film As Competition And Would Like Instead To Do What Books Do Best.

If You Flee From The Things You Fear, There's No Resolution.

A Moment Is All You Can Expect From Perfection.

She's Not Wearing Makeup So Her Face Just Looks Like Skin.

The Same Way A Compact Disk Isn't Responsible For What's Recorded On It, That's How We Are. You're About As Free To Act As A Programmed Computer. You're About As One-of-a-kind As A Dollar Bill.

What I Did Was Pour Out About A Gallon Of Chanel Number Five And Put A Burning Wedding Invitation To It, And Boom, I'm Recycling.

We All Want To Explain Ourselves. Nobody Wants To Be Forgotten.

I Want To Find Something Else, Unknowable, Some Place That's Not On The Map. A Real Adventure.

No Matter What Happens, It’s Always Now.

Actually, Watching Television And Surfing The Internet Are Really Excellent Practice For Being Dead.

We Hear The Ambient Noise Of Children Singing. We Hear Lions And Tigers Roar. Hyenas Laugh. Some Jungle Bird Or Howler Monkey Declares Its Existence, Screeching A Maniac's Gibberish. Our Entire World, Always Doing Battle Against The Silence And Obscurity Of Death.

Cults Make People Sing So Hard For So Long - Because It Over-oxygenates The Blood And Sets Them Up To Faint.

I Try To Forget About The Expectation That's Out There And The Audience Listening For The Next Thing So That I'm Not Trying To Please Them. I've Spent A Huge Amount Of Time Not Communicating With Those Folks And Denying That They Exist.

If I Could Wake Up In A Different Place, At A Different Time, Could I Wake Up As A Different Person?

You Could Stab A Knife Right Through My Heart And You'd Be Too Late.

Parenthood Is The Opiate Of The Masses.

Also Consider That Someday, When You’re Dead And Rotted, Kids With Their Baby Teeth Will Sit In Their Time-geography Class And Laugh About How Stupid You Were.

I Know So Many Writers Who Are A Hundred Times Better Than Me And Have Longer, Greater Ideas Than Mine, But They Gave Up; They Stopped. The Biggest Talent You Can Have Is Determination.

Minimalism Seems Closest To The Sophisticated Storytelling Of Movies. Movies Have Really Educated Contemporary Audiences To Be The Most Intelligent, Sophisticated Audiences In History. We Don't Any Longer Need To Have The Relationship Between One Scene And The Next Explained. We Will Figure It Out Ourselves.

No Matter What Else You Came Up Against, If You Could Smile And Laugh While A Monkey Did You With Chestnuts In A Dank Concrete Basement While Somebody Took Pictures, Well, Any Other Situation Would Be A Piece Of Cake

People Will Listen To You Only When They Know You're Dying, Otherwise They're Just Waiting For Their Turn To Talk.

How This Feels Is I'm Just Another Task In God's Daily Planner: The Renaissance Pencilled In For Right After The Dark Ages. The Information Age Is Scheduled Immediately After The Industrial Revolution. Then The Post-modern Era, Then The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And Between The Big Events, The Earthquakes And Tidal Waves, God's Got Me Squeezed In For A Cameo Appearance. Then Maybe In Thirty Years, Or Maybe Next Year, God's Daily Planner Has Me Finished.

I Think Standardization Is Really The First Step To Something Being Commodified.

The Trick To Forgetting The Big Picture Is To Look At Everything Close-up.

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.

What You Have To Consider Is The Possibility That God Doesn't Like You. Could Be, God Hates Us. This Is Not The Worst Thing That Could Happen.

That's How A Good Story Works. It Changes How You Feel. It Brings You To A Greater Appreciation, A Greater Joy, Of Your Own Existence.

Only After Disaster Can We Be Resurrected.

Fight Club Book

A Shadow Of A Reflection Of An Image Of An Illusion.

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.

People Have To Deal With Their Issues Together; They Have To Expose Themselves And Kind Of Exhaust Themselves.

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.

How Everything You Ever Love Will Reject You Or Die. Everything You Ever Create Will Be Thrown Away. Everything You're Proud Of Will End Up As Trash.

What They Don't Teach You In Art School Is How Your Whole Life Is About Discovering Who You Already Were.

I Feel My Heart Ache, But I've Forgotten What That Feeling Means.

Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill.

About My Boss, Tyler Tells Me, If I'm Really Angry, I Should Go To The Post Office And Fill Out A Change-of-address Card And Have All His Mail Forwarded To Rugby, North Dakota.

I'm Never Going To Have To Work. None Of My Descendants Are Ever Going To Have To Work; This Is Going To Make Me So Much Money. It Was Such A Letdown When I Realized That Wasn't My Invention.

There Are People Out There Who Will Not Read Books, But Somehow They'll Read My Books.

I Am Jack's Complete Lack Of Surprise. I Am Jack's Broken Heart.

Since Change Is Constant, You Wonder If People Crave Death Because It's The Only Way They Can Get Anything Really Finished.

Any 'artist' Makes A Living By Expressing What Others Can't - Because They're Unaware Of Their Feelings, They're Too Afraid To Express Those Feelings, Or They Lack The Skills To Communicate And Be Understood.

I Tagged A First-timer One Night At Fight Club. That Saturday Night, A Young Guy With An Angel’s Face Came To His First Fight Club, And I Tagged Him For A Fight. That’s The Rule. If It’s Your First Night In Fight Club, You Have To Fight. I Knew That So I Tagged Him Because The Insomnia Was On Again, And I Was In A Mood To Destroy Something Beautiful.

Some People Still Think Knowledge Is Power.

Knowledge Is Power

Anymore, No One's Mind Is Their Own.

Find Out What You're Afraid Of And Go Live There.

Hope Is Something Really Tough And Tenacious You Have To Give Up. It’s An Addiction To Break.

Every Generation Wants To Be The Last. Every Generation Hates The Next Trend In Music They Can't Understand. We Hate To Give Up Those Reins Of Our Culture. To Find Our Own Music Playing In Elevators. The Ballad For Our Revolution, Turned Into Background Music For A Television Commercial. To Find Our Generation's Clothes And Hair Suddenly Retro.

Television Commercials

I've Been Choking To Death For Years. By Now This Should Be Easy.

Besides, It Happens Fast For Some People And Slow For Some, Accidents Or Gravity, But We All End Up Mutilated.

I Spent My Life Attacking Everything Because I Was Too Afraid To Risk Creating Anything.

That Guy Behind Me On The Airplane? He's Been Kicking My Seat Because He Hates Me. He's Kicking My Seat Because He Hates Me And I'm Gonna Kill Him. When We Get Off This Plane, I'm Gonna Make Eye Contact. I'm Gonna Kill That Guy. And All Of That Is Just Stuff In My Head, But It's Good To Get Rid Of That Stuff.

My Point Is, That If I'm Honest, My Life Is All About Me.

There Are Bodies Buried Everywhere You Just Have To Know Where To Look.

What We Call Chaos Is Just Patterns We Haven’t Recognized. What We Call Random Is Just Patterns We Can't Decipher.

Without Access To True Chaos, We'll Never Have True Peace. Unless Everything Can Get Worse, It Won't Get Any Better.

Because Everything Up To Now Is A Story And Everything After Now Is A Story.

You Ever Been Trapped In A World Where You're Everyone's Worst Nightmare?

Worst Nightmares

I Don't Care What They Do With My Book So Long As The Flippin Check Clears.

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?

When Both Of You Are Beautiful, Neither Of You Is Beautiful. Together, As A Couple, You're Less Than The Sum Of Your Parts.

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With A Gun Barrel Between Your Teeth, You Speak Only In Vowels.

Sorry, Mom. Sorry, God.

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Burn The Louvre, And Wipe Your Ass With The Mona Lisa. This Way At Least, God Would Know Our Names.

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The Lucky Ones Are Just Born Dead.

Without True Chaos, We Can Never Have True Peace.

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