Background Image

...

A Guy's Calling To Say He's Failing Algebra Ii. Just As A Point Of Practice, I Say, Kill Yourself. A Woman Calls And Says Her Kids Won't Behave. Without Missing A Beat, I Tell Her, Kill Yourself. A Man Calls To Say His Car Won't Start. Kill Yourself. A Woman Calls To Ask What Time The Late Movie Starts. Kill Yourself. She Asks, "isn't This 555-1327? Is This The Moorehouse Cineplex? I Say, Kill Yourself. Kill Yourself. Kill Yourself.

-Chuck Palahniuk

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

A Guy's Calling To

Chuck Palahniuk

...

A Guy's Calling To Say He's Failing Algebra Ii. Just As A Point Of Practice, I Say, Kill Yourself. A Woman Calls And Says Her Kids Won't Behave. Without Missing A Beat, I Tell Her, Kill Yourself. A Man Calls To Say His Car Won't Start. Kill Yourself. A Woman Calls To Ask What Time The Late Movie Starts. Kill Yourself. She Asks, "isn't This 555-1327? Is This The Moorehouse Cineplex? I Say, Kill Yourself. Kill Yourself. Kill Yourself.

Views: 31368

Topic

More From Chuck Palahniuk

In Light This Bright, After So Long In The Dark, Everything We Can See Is Only Black And White. Only Glaring Shape-outlines We Have To Blink Against.

Black And White

Because Nothing Is As Good As You Can Imagine It. No One Is As Beautiful As She Is In Your Head. Nothing Is As Exciting As Your Fantasy.

I Know This Because Tyler Knows This.

Fight Club Novel

The Problem With Every Story Is You Tell It After The Fact.

The Only Person We'll Hate More Than Each Other Is Ourselves.

If You Ask Me, Most People Have Children Just As Their Own Enthusiasm About Life Begins To Wane.

You Know How They Say You Only Hurt The Ones You Love? Well, It Works Both Ways.

People Had Been Working For So Many Years To Make The World A Safe Organized Place. Nobody Realized How Boring It Would Become.

We're All Trapped. It's Always 1734. All Of Us, We're Stuck In The Same Time Capsule, The Same As Those Television Shows Where The Same People Are Marooned On The Same Desert Island For Thirty Seasons And Never Age Or Escape. They Just Wear More Makeup. In A Creepy Way, Those Shows Are Maybe Too Authentic.

I Learned All Those Jokes In Second Grade. Second Grade Is Really Where They Tell You Those Horrific Jokes, Racist Jokes And Misogynistic Jokes That You Have No Idea What They Mean, And You Just Memorize Them Because They Have A Very Strong Effect, They Make People Laugh In This Kind Of Nervous, Horrible Way, And It's Only Later That You Realize That You've Got A Head Full Of Crap.

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.

What Makes Earth Feel Like Hell Is Our Expectation That It Should Feel Like Heaven.

Get Married Before The Sex Gets Boring Or You'll Never Get Married.

My First Time I Jacked Off, I Thought I'd Invented It. I Looked Down At My Sloppy Handful Of Junk And Thought, This Is Going To Make Me Rich.

Funny Relationship

What People Forget Is A Journey To Nowhere Starts With A Single Step, Too.

I'm Fascinated By The Whole Issue Of Arousal Addiction, Which Seems To Be Mostly A Problem For Young Men.

They're Just Words Is All. Powerless. Vocabulary. Dialogue.

In The End, It's Never What You Worry About That Gets You.

Nothing Was Solved When The Fight Was Over, But Nothing Mattered.

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

Oh Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me. I'll Be Anybody You Want Me To Be.

Give Me Lust, Baby. Flash. Give Me Malice. Flash. Give Me Detached Existentialist Ennui. Flash. Give Me Rampant Intellectualism As A Coping Mechanism. Flash.

Coping Mechanisms

I Could Imagine Myself Becoming One Of Marla's Stories.

Portland In Particular Is A Cheap Enough Place To Live That You Can Still Develop Your Passion - Painting, Writing, Music. People Seem Less Status-conscious. Even Wealthy People Buy Second-hand Clothes And Look A Little Bit Homeless.

Leonardo's Mona Lisa Is Just A Thousand Thousand Smears Of Paint. Michelangelo's David Is Just A Million Hits With A Hammer. We're All Of Us A Million Bits Put Together The Right Way.

My Theory Is That Church Used To Be That Place. Instead Of Being A Place Where You Went To Look Good, It Was A Place Where You Could Risk Going Every Week To Look Your Worst.

You Don't Have Ideas When You're Sitting In That Sort Of Sterile Little Place, And You're Not Around People. The Most Boring Scenes Are The Scenes Where A Character Is Alone. I Just Need That Dynamic Of Other People Around Me To Get My Work Done.

Books Can Create A Depth Of Story, A Background Of Information And Ideas, That Televison And Movies Can't. Sure, The Television Shows May Shock, But Only On A Superficial Level. They'd Never Risk Market Share To Really Explore The Issues. They Report, But Don't Analyze Or Suggest Any New Ways For Living Our Lives.

We All Die. The Goal Isn't To Live Forever, The Goal Is To Create Something That Will.

College Is Like A Fountain Of Knowledge - And The Students Are There To Drink

These Days, Most Of The People You Hear Laughing Are Dead.

For This Moment, Nothing Matters. Look Up Into The Stars And You're Gone.

Think Of Spoiled Cat Food And Ulcerated Cankers And Expired Donor Organs. That's How Beautiful She Looks.

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 Avant-garde In Every Field Consists Of The Lonely, The Friendless, The Uninvited. All Progress Is The Product Of The Unpopular.

The Whole World Is A Disaster Waiting To Happen.

These Stories Are Ghosts, Bringing People Back From The Dead. Just For A Moment. For A Visit. Every Story Is A Ghost.

You Tell Yourself That Noise Is What Defines Silence. Without Noise, Silence Would Not Be Golden. Noise Is The Exception.

The Most Boring Scenes Are The Scenes Where A Character Is Alone.

On Game Shows, Some People Will Take The Trip To France, But Most People Will Take The Washer And Dryer Pair.

There's A Big Difference Between "not Caring" Or Being "nihilistic" About A Topic And Simply Not Being Enrolled By The Drama Presented By Other People. Just Because My Characters Choose Not To React In Standard, Socially-appropriate Ways - That Does Not Mean They Don't Care. They Just Reject Ordinary Dramas.

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.

Every Stage Of Life Has Its Own Form Of Power, And We're Always Sort Of Terrified As To Whether We Can Make The Jump To The Next Form Of Power.

When A Regular Person Gets Sick, They Take An Aspirin. When A Writer Gets Sick, They Take Notes.

Where Would Jesus Be If No One Had Written The Gospels?

Fight Club Novel

Now This Is The First Rule Of Fight Club: There Is Nothing A Blue Collar Nobody In Oregon With A Public School Education Can Imagine That A Million-billion People Haven't Already Done.

And If You Believe That We Really Have Free Will, Then You Know That God Can't Really Control Us. And Since God Can't Control Us, All God Does Is Watch And Change Channels When He Gets Bored.

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.

You Can't Be Beautiful," Brandy Says About A Thousand Times, "until You Feel Beautiful.

People Would Ask Me To Autograph Their Bodies And Then The Next Time I'd See Them On Tour They'd Have My Autograph Tattooed. I Decided I Wouldn't Write On People Anymore, But I'd Give Them Arms And Legs And If They Wanted Those Autographed I'd Do That.

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.

Still, It's Nice To Have One Person Who Knows All Your Secrets.

Maybe Self-improvement Isn't The Answer, Maybe Self-destruction Is The Answer.

Beginning With Santa Claus As A Cognitive Exercise, A Child Is Encouraged To Share The Same Idea Of Reality As His Peers. Even If That Reality Is Patently Invented And Ludicrous, Belief Is Encouraged With Gifts That Support And Promote The Common Cultural Lies. The Greatest Consensus In Modern Society Is Our Traffic Systems. The Way A Flood Of Strangers Can Interact, Sharing A Path, Almost All Of Them Traveling Without Incident. It Only Takes One Dissenting Driver To Create Anarchy.

Torture Is Torture And Humiliation Is Humiliation Only When You Choose To Suffer.

The Future Is Just Wasted On Some People.

Invisible Monsters

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.

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

Regret, Daisy Knew, Was The Only Confirmation Of A Well-lived Life. If You Didn't Occasionally Go Too Far, You Weren't Going Anywhere.

You Know How Both Life And Porno Movies End. The Only Difference Is Life Starts With The Orgasm.

Deliver Me From Swedish Furniture. Deliver Me From Clever Art. And The Phone Rang And Tyler Answered. "if You Don't Know What You Want," The Doorman Said, "you End Up With A Lot You Don't." May I Never Be Complete. May I Never Be Content. May I Never Be Perfect. Deliver Me, Tyler, From Being Perfect And Complete.

There Is A Social Contract In "fight Club" And In "choke" Where The Protagonist Has Deceived A Whole Bunch Of People. In "choke" It's All Of These People Who Think That They've Saved His Life, And Really Care About Him Because They've Embraced Him And They've Been His Saviors. In "fight Club" It's All Of These People Who Are Dying Of Various Diseases, And They Thought That Edward Norton Was Also Dying So They Allowed Him Really Strong Pent-up Emotions.

As If You Cut Open A Rag Doll With A Sill Name, And Found Inside:real Intestines, Real Lungs, A Beating Heart And Blood. A Lot Of Hot, Sticky Blood.

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

A Little Old Lady Sitting At The Front Of The Bus Can Do Nothing To Change Civil Rights.

The Voice Says, Maybe You Don't Go To Hell For The Things You Do. Maybe You Go To Hell For The Things You Don't Do. The Things You Don't Finish.

Your Being Born Makes Your Parents God. You Owe Them Your Life, And They Can Control You. Then Puberty Makes You Satan, Just Because You Want Something Better.

Invisible Monsters

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.

To Hell With Housework, Our Top Priority Has Always Been Between Our Legs.

I Haven't Had A Tv In 10 Years, And I Really Don't Miss It. 'cause It's Always So Much More Fun To Be With People Than It Ever Was To Be With A Television.

I Came To Party Crashing Because Accidents Happen. People You Love Will Die. Nothing You Treasure Will Last Forever. And I Need To Accept And Embrace That Fact.

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

I Am The Child Of A Lunatic. Not A Child Of God.

The Greatest Weapon Any Warrior Can Carry Into Battle Is Absolute Certainty Of Her Eternal Soul.

We All Have This Moment, When Your Folks First See You As Someone Not Growing Up To Be Them.

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

And If I Do Fall Asleep, Marla Has To Keep Track Of Tyler. Where He Goes. What He Does. So Maybe During The Day, I Can Rush Around And Undo The Damage.

The Only Thing That Separates Us From The Animals... Is We Have Pornography.

By The Time You Read This, You'll Be Older Than You Remember.

Some Writers Research In Order To Write. I Write In Order To Research Topics That Interest Me. Especially If I Can Meet With Other People, In Forums From Illness Support Groups To Phone-sex Hotlines, And Learn What Other People Know Best.

I See So Many Tattoos Of My Stuff On People - Tattoos Of My Book Covers, Tattoos Of Quotes . . . It's Kind Of Daunting Sometimes.

The Government Says Rant's Alive Because They Need A Villain. The Kids Say He's Alive Because They Need A Hero.

Without Pain, Without Sacrifice We Would Have Nothing. Like The First Monkey Shot Into Space.

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

People Who Don't Want To Get On With Their Lives, And Don't Want To Accept Responsibility For The Direction Of Their Lives Want To Hang Out With Other People Who Don't Want To Accept Responsibility Or Move On, And So You Find That Your Entire Culture Around You Are People Who Are Just Like You, Because That's What's Comforting.

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

If Marilyn Monroe Was Alive Right Now, What Would She Be Doing?' Clawing At The Roof Of Her Coffin.

It's Not Living Alone If You Keep A Rifle Under The Bed.

According To Plato, We Don't Learn Anything. Our Soul Has Lived So Many Lives That We Know Everything. Teachers And Education Can Only Remind Us Of What We Already Know.

Our Real Discoveries Come From Chaos.

Invisible Monsters

Skin, Bones, Blood And Organs Transplant From Person To Person. Even What’s Inside You Already, The Colonies Of Microbes And Bugs That Eat Your Food For You, Without Them You’d Die. Nothing Of You Is All-the-way Yours. All Of You Is Inherited. Whatever You’re Thinking, A Million Other Folks Are Thinking. Whatever You Do, They’re Doing, And None Of You Is Responsible. All Of You Is A Cooperative Effort.

Some People Still Think Knowledge Is Power.

Knowledge Is Power

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

You Have To Jump Into Disaster With Both Feet.

Invisible Monsters

Ultimately, Everyone Is Acting Out Of What They Feel Is The Best Choice. In A Way, They're All Trying To Improve The World. And I Think That Those Basic Choices Make The World A Better Place.

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

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’ve Thrown Down The Gauntlet. You’ve Brought My Wrath Down Upon Your House. Now, To Prove That I Exist I Must Kill You. As The Child Outlives The Father, So Must The Character Bury The Author. If You Are, In Fact, My Continuing Author, Then Killing You Will End My Existence As Well. Small Loss. Such A Life, As Your Puppet, Is Not Worth Living. But… If I Destroy You And Your Dreck Script, And I Still Exist… Then My Existence Will Be Glorious, For I Will Become My Own Master.

More And More People Are Defining Themselves Not By What They Are About, But By What They Are Against, What They Are Overcoming, The Thing That Is Wrong With Them.

If You Could Be Either God’s Worst Enemy Or Nothing, Which Would You Choose?

Fight Club Novel

It's Easy To Cry When You Realize That Everyone You Love Will Reject You Or Die.

It's Easy To Attack And Destroy An Act Of Creation. It's A Lot More Difficult To Perform One.

The Ultimate Joke Was The Idea That Capitalism Would Eat Its Own Feces In Order To Make Money, That Would Make Fun Of Itself If Capitalism Thought There Was A Buck In It.

Where Every Day Doesn't Start With An Alarm Clock And End With The Television.

Fathers. Mothers. With All Their Caring And Attention. They Will Fuck You Up, Every Time.

When I See People Talking On The Internet About Me Or My Work It's Almost Always More A Description Of Themselves And So I Never Really Think Of Myself As Anything More Than Just Who I Always Was.

The Big Reason Why Folks Leave A Small Town,' Rant Used To Say, 'is So They Can Moon Over The Idea Of Going Back. And The Reason They Stay Put Is So They Can Moon About Getting Out.' Rant Meant That No One Is Happy, Anywhere.

When Did The Future Switch From Being A Promise To A Threat?

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

It's Only After We've Lost Everything That We're Free To Do Anything.

Skinny Guys Fight Till They're Burger.

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.

Let's All Embrace Someone Near Us. Pick Someone Special To You. Tell This Someone How You Feel.

The One You Love And The One Who Loves You Are Never, Ever The Same Person.

All You Can Do Is Hope For A Pattern To Emerge, And Sometimes It Never Does. Still, With A Plan, You Only Get The Best You Can Imagine. I'd Always Hoped For Something Better Than That.

We're Consumers. We Are By-products Of A Lifestyle Obsession. Murder, Crime, Poverty, These Things Don't Concern Me. What Concerns Me Are Celebrity Magazines, Television With 500 Channels, Some Guy's Name On My Underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra...

Make Me Into Anything, But Just Love Me.

Invisible Monsters

Crying Is Right At Hand In The Smothering Dark, Closed Inside Someone Else, When You See How Everything You Can Ever Accomplish Will End Up As Trash.

For Official Record, Announce Instructor, The State Requires No Epic Hero. No Strive Achieve Personal Celebrity Of Spotlight And Applause. Lectures Instructor, The State Desires Best Ideal Perform As Mediocre. No Gain Attention Showboat. No Buffoon. Best Effort So Occur Average. Suppress Climbing Ego. Become Ordinary. Invisible.

For The Most Part My Friends Can Always Be More Entertaining Than The Tube Ever Can Be.

Even If I Overcompensate, Nobody Will Ever Want Me. Not Seth. Not My Folks. You Can’t Kiss Someone Who Has No Lips. Oh, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me. I’ll Be Anybody You Want Me To Be

In Truth, The Degree Of Anyone's Success Depends On How Often They Can Say The Word Yes And Hear The Word No.

In All Probability The Human Genome Project Will, Someday, Find That I Carry Some Recessive Gene For Optimism, Because Despite All My Best Efforts I Still Can't Scrape Together Even A Couple Days Of Hopelessness. Future Scientists Will Call It The Pollyanna Syndrome, And If Forced To Guess, I'd Say That Mine Has Been A Way-long Case History Of Chasing Rainbows.

Chasing Rainbows

Tyler And Me At The Edge Of The Roof, The Gun In My Mouth, I'm Wondering How Clean This Gun Is.

Ask Yourself: What Did I Eat For Breakfast Today? What Did I Eat For Dinner Last Night? You See How Fast Reality Fades Away?

I Tiger Can Smile A Snake Will Say It Loves You Lies Make Us Evil

On A Night Without Moon Or Stars You Can't See A Thing, But You Can Imagine Anything.

Did Perpetual Happiness In The Garden Of Eden Maybe Get So Boring That Eating The Apple Was Justified?

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.

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

You Ever Wonder If Adam And Eve Were Just The Puppies God Dumped Because They Wouldn't House-train?

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.

Trust Me, The Being-dead Part Is Much Easier Than The Dying Part. If You Can Watch Much Television, Then Being Dead Will Be A Cinch. Actually, Watching Television And Surfing The Internet Are Really Excellent Practice For Being Dead.

Every Generation Wants To Be The Last.

The First Time We Meet Another Person An Insidious Little Voice In Our Heads Says, "i Might Wear Eyeglasses Or Be Chunky Around The Hips Or A Girl, But At Least I'm Not Gay Or Black Or A Jew." Meaning: I May Be Me- But At Least I Have The Good Sense Not To Be You.

Anything You Can Aquire Is Only Another Thing You'll Lose.

I'm Really Glad That I Spent My Twenties Messing Around And Having Disaster After Disaster - With People Who Were Doing Likewise - Because It's Really My Greatest Treasure Now.

Greatest Treasure

Nothing Of Me Is Original. I Am The Combined Effort Of Everyone I've Ever Known.

Imagine A Plague You Catch Through Your Ears.

Someday You Will Die, And Until You Know That, You're Useless To Me.

Why Should I Believe Any Of This?' It Happens That Fast. I Say, Because I Think I Like You. Marla Says, 'not Love?' This Is A Cheesy Enough Moment, I Say. Don't Push It.

If Your Body Is A Temple, You Can Pile Up Too Much Deferred Maintenance. If Your Body Is A Temple, Mine Was A Real Fixer-upper.

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

No Fear. No Distractions. The Ability To Let That Which Does Not Matter Truly Slide.

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

Not Everything Is About Money. You Didn't Even Say, Hello. You Are Not Your Sad Little Wallet.

Because Tanning And Steroids Are Only A Problem If You Plan To Live A Long Time.

People Had Been Working For So Many Years To Make The World A Safe, Organized Place. Nobody Realized How Boring It Would Become. With The Whole World Property-lined And Speed-limited And Zoned And Taxed And Regulated, With Everyone Tested And Registered And Adressed And Recorded. Nobody Had Left Much Room For Adventure, Except Maybe The Kind You Could Buy. [...] The Laws That Keep Us Safe, These Same Laws Condemn Us To Boredom.

You're Not Getting This Back You Know. Consider It An Asshole Tax.

Give Me Romance. Flash. Give Me Denial.

History Is Filled With Brilliant People Who Wanted To Fix Things And Just Made Them Worse.

For Sure, They Don't Teach You This In History Class, But In Colonial Times, The Person Who Got Left In The Stocks Overnight Was Nothing Less Than Fair Game For Everybody To Nail. Men Or Women, Anybody Bent Over Had No Way Of Knowing Who Was Doing The Ram Job, And This Was The Real Reason You Never Wanted To End Up Here Unless You Had A Family Member Or A Friend Who'd Stand With You The Whole Time. To Protect You. To Watch Your Ass, For Real.

Years Of Living In The Hope That What You'll Get Will Be Better Than What You Have. Years Of Looking And Feeling Worse In The Hope That You Might Look Better.

This Deluded Little Rube Who Really Thought The Future Would Be Any Better. If You Just Worked Hard Enough. If You Just Learned Enough. Ran Fast Enough. Everything Would Turn Out Right, And Your Life Would Amount To Something.

Language, She Said, Was Just Our Way To Explain Away The Wonder And Glory Of The World. To Deconstruct. To Dismiss. She Said People Can't Deal With How Beautiful The World Really Is. How It Can't Be Explained And Understood.

There Are A Lot Of Things We Don't Want To Know About The People We Love.

A Comedy Ends With A Wedding, And A Tragedy Ends With A Funeral: You Always Have To Juxtapose Sex And Death.

Any Time Some Well-meaning Person Forces You To Demonstrate You Have No Talent And Rubs Your Nose In The Fact You're A Failure At The Only Dream You Ever Had, Take Another Drink.

My Stories Tend To Bring People From Isolation Into Community - With At Least One Other Person, Usually With A Whole Community Of People - So That They Find Themselves Accepted Back By A World That They Kind Of Fled From.

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.

Everyone Has Something Wrong. And For A While, Her Heart Just Sort Of Flat Lined.

If You Can Change The Way People Think. The Way They See Themselves. The Way They See The World. If You Do That, You Can Change The Way People Live Their Lives. That's The Only Lasting Thing You Can Create.

So If You Think This Is Going To Save You...if You Think Anything Is Going To Save You...please Consider This Your Final Warning.

You Only Ask People About Themselves So You Can Tell Them About Yourself.

The Girl Is Infectious Human Waste, And She's Confused And Afraid To Commit To The Wrong Thing And So She Won't Commit To Anything.

Somehow It Seems Wrong To Photograph A Blind Person. It’s Like Stealing Something Valuable They Don’t Even Know They Own.

You’re Training A New Employee,' Says Mrs. Clark, 'to Take Over Your Boring Old Job.' When You Raise A Child.

I Told Him To Buy Land, My Mum Says, They’re Not Making It Anymore.

We Have Pain And Hate And Love And Joy And War In The World Because We Want Them.

There Will Always Be An Underground.

Your Past Is Just A Story. And Once You Realize This It Has No Power Over You.

Most Times, It's Just A Lot Easier Not To Let The World Know What's Wrong.

Somehow People Have Been Sold On The Idea That Only Professionals Can Entertain Them, That Only Professionals Can Sing Or Tell Jokes. And People Are Cut Out Of This Creativity Loop, And Creativity Is Being Limited To These Large, Centralized Voices.

Help Me Give Up My Addiction To Hope.

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

Property Ownership

I Often Need Physical Gesture To Balance Dialogue. If I Write In Public, Every Time I Need To Know What A Character Is Doing With His Hand Or Foot, I Can Look Up And Study People And Find Compelling Gestures That I Can Harvest. Writing In Public Gives You That Access To A Junkyard Of Details All Around You.

Worker Bees Can Leave. Even Drones Can Fly Away. The Queen Is Their Slave.

I Try To Tell A Story The Way Someone Would Tell You A Story In A Bar, With The Same Kind Of Timing And Pacing.

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

What If Reality Is Nothing But Some Disease?

Everything Is Funnier In Retrospect, Funnier And Prettier And Cooler. You Can Laugh At Anything From Far Enough Away.

You Have To Give Up! You Have To Give Up! You Have To Realize That Someday You Will Die, Until You Know That, You Are Useless!

How Can You Possibly Believe He Really Loves You?” Miss Sneezy Looks From The Mother To The Saint To Mr. Whittier’s Hand.“you Have No Choice,” Mr. Whittier Tells Her. “if You Need To Be Loved.

Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill.

What You See At Fight Club Is A Generation Of Men Raised By Women.

Stanislavski Was Right, You Can Find Fresh Pain Every Time You Discover What You Pretty Much Already Know.

To Preserve Yourself As The Center Of The World, To Stay Your Own Best Authority On Everything, Your Own Expert On All Topics, Infallible, Omniscient. Always, Every Time Of The Month, Forever: Use Birth Control.

Men Are Destroyed For Being Rebellious, And Women Destroy Themselves By Failing To Be Rebellious. Unless You Can Make That Next Jump To Either Getting Along With People Or Resisting People, You Are Ultimately Destroying Yourself.

Writers Should Be Able To Fully Deduct From Their Taxes All Writing-related Expenses, Including Alcohol, Parking Tickets, Court Judgments, Fines For Lewd Public Behavior, Zoloft, And Cigarettes.

I Want My Whole Life Lined With A Topical Anesthetic.

The Body Ages. Grows. Passes Through Near-lunatic Phases Of Reproductive Frenzy, But You Are Born And Die Essentially The Same Person. That... That Is Proof Of Your Deathless Soul.

My Life Has Been About Living Like A Monk And Looking Like A Priest So That People Will Come Up To Me And Tell Me Their Most Appalling Stories. They Have To Make Their Confession To Somebody, And It Might As Well Be Me.

I Thought Why Not Write A Kind Of Mystery, Murder, Thriller Book, But Use Romance Language Where The Language Plays Completely Against The Very Dark Subject Matter, That Very Strange Murderous Plot, But Use That Harlequin Romance Language.

You Can’t Fool People Into Loving You.

Anymore, No One's Mind Is Their Own.

Potassium Cyanide," Says The Talent Wrangler As She Leans Over To Pick Up A Paper Napkin Off The Floor. "found Naturally In The Cassava Or Manioc Roots Native To Africa, Used To Tint Architectural Blueprints In The Form Of The Deep-blue Pigment Known As Prussian Blue. Hence The Shade 'cyan' Blue.

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.

Maybe The Only Thing Each Of Us Can See Is Our Own Shadow. 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. The Same Way Old Painters Would Sit In A Tiny Dark Room And Trace The Image Of What Stood Outside A Tiny Window, In The Bright Sunlight. The Camera Obscura. Not The Exact Image, But Everything Reversed Or Upside Down.

I Know That When A Supersexy Older Girl With Hips And Breasts And Nice Hair Wants To Take Off Your Glasses And To Paint You A Smoky Eye She's Merely Trying To Enroll You In A Beauty Contest She's Already Won. It's A Kind Of Slummy, Condescending Gesture, Like When Rich People Ask Poor People Where They Summer. To Me, This Smacks Of A Blatant, Insensitive "let Them Eat Cake" Type Of Chauvinism.

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.

So Here I Am. This Is As Good As It Gets. Take It Or Leave It.

Good As It Gets

Trending Author

Category