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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.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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Do You Remember When

Chuck Palahniuk

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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.

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Love And Life Belongs To Great Risk.

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

At This Rate, We'll Never Get To The Future.

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

Life's Greatest Comfort Is Being Able To Look Over Your Shoulder And See People Worse Off, Waiting In Line Behind You.

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Maybe The Truth Is I Really Want To Like You Instead.

I Think America Is Just So In Love With Conflict.

All The Effort In The World Won't Matter If You're Not Inspired.

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It's My Petty Fear Of Personal Rejection That Allows So Many True Evils To Exist. My Cowardice Enables Atrocities.

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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.

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I Am An Invisible Monster, And I Am Incapable Of Loving Anybody. You Don't Know Which Is Worse.

I Take Pens And I Write On The Inside Of My Arm. When I'm With People And Somebody Says A Really Fascinating Anecdote, Or Fact, Or Phrase, I'll Write It On The Inside Of My Arm. At The End Of The Day, I'll Take The Very Best Things That Are On My Arm And I'll Copy Them Into A Notebook That I Always Carry And Only When The Weather Is Absolutely Terrible Will I Really Key The Very Best Of That Notebook Into The Computer. At That Point, It's All Sort Of Censored Twice - Only The Best Things Go From The Arm To The Book And Only The Best Things Go From The Book To The Computer.

The Girl's Lover Was Gone, But His Shadow Was Still There.

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

Sex Pretty Much Cures Everything.

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You're Doomed At Being You.

It’s Weird To Think The Place Where We’re Standing Will Only Be A Point In The Sky.

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Having Nothing To Lose Is The New Wealth.

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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.

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At That Moment, It Seemed The Whole World Cared What Happened To Him. All Those People Were Hugging Him And Petting His Hair. Everybody Asked If He Was Okay. It Seemed That Moment Would Last Forever. That You Had To Risk Your Life To Get Love. You Had To Get Right To The Edge Of Death To Ever Be Saved.

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.

Put A Gun To My Head And Paint The Wall With My Brains.

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If You Look At Old Pictures, Irene Casey Is So Pretty. Not Just Young, But Pretty The Way You Look When Your Face Goes Smooth, The Skin Around Your Eyes And Lips Relaxed, The Pretty You Only Look When You Love The Person Taking The Picture.

If There Had Been Zombies On The Iceberg When The Titanic Hit It, That Would Have Made A Much Better Movie.

I Really Love Idiot, Enlightened Characters - These Characters Who Fail To Engage With The Drama Of Their Immediate Circumstances; They Fail To Be Reactive And Enrolled By Drama As It Happens Around Them.

Either A Species Learns To Control Its Own Population, Or Something Like Disease, Famine, War, Will Take Care Of The Issue.

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.

It's Exhausting, The Energy It Takes To Unknow A Truth.

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

The Girl Traced The Outline Of Her Lover's Shadow So She Would Always Have A Record Of How He Looked.

Everything Is A Self-portrait. A Diary. Your Whole Drug History’s In A Strand Of Your Hair. Your Fingernails. The Forensic Details. The Lining Of Your Stomach Is A Document. The Calluses On Your Hand Tell All Your Secrets. Your Teeth Give You Away. Your Accent. The Wrinkles Around Your Mouth And Eyes. Everything You Do Shows Your Hand.

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.

Skinny Guys Fight Till They're Burger.

If You Love Something Set It Free, But Don't Be Surprised If It Comes Back With Herpes.

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

There Are Only Patterns, Patterns On Top Of Patterns, Patterns That Affect Other Patterns. Patterns Hidden By Patterns. Patterns Within Patterns. If You Watch Close, History Does Nothing But Repeat Itself. What We Call Chaos Is Just Patterns We Haven't Recognized. What We Call Random Is Just Patterns We Can't Decipher. What We Can't Understand We Call Nonsense. What We Can't Read We Call Gibberish. There Is No Free Will. There Are No Variables.

No One Wants To Admit We're Addicted To Music. That's Just Not Possible. No One's Addicted To Music And Television And Radio. We Just Need More Of It, More Channels, A Larger Screen, More Volume. We Can't Bear To Be Without It, But No, Nobody's Addicted. We Could Turn It Off Anytime We Wanted. I Fit A Window Frame Into A Brick Wall. With A Little Brush, The Size For Fingernail Polish, I Glue It. The Window Is The Size Of A Fingernail. The Glue Smells Like Hair Spray. The Smell Tastes Like Oranges And Gasoline.

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

I Just Don't Want To Die Without A Few Scars.

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.

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

A Knife, It Felt Like A Knife, And I'd Discovered That Despite Everything That's Happened, I Still Had An Endless Untapped Potential For Getting Hurt.

Untapped Potential

I Am Not Loved. I Am Not A Beautiful Soul. I Am Not A Good-natured, Giving Person. I Am Not Anybody's Savior.

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.

I Wanted To Destroy Everything Beautiful I'd Never Have.

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.

I Figure If Eve Could Get Us Into This Mess, I Could Get Us Out. After All, God Really Likes To See A Go-getter.

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

Screenwriters Get Paid A Hell Of A Lot More Money But Their Level Of Frustration Seems To Be So High That I Don't Want That.

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

We Opened Our Hearts. Hear Me, Heal Me, Save Me, Believe Me.

These Flowers Will Be Rotten In A Couple Hours. Birds Will Crap On Them. The Smoke Here Will Make Them Stink, And Tomorrow A Bulldozer Will Probably Run Over Them, But For Right Now They Are So Beautiful.

The Same As Real Life, There Is No Happily Ever After.

You Always Kill The One You Love.

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.

Real Smarts Begin When You Quit Quoting Other People.

What I'm Always Trying To Do With Every Book Is To Recreate The Effect Of The Stories We Heard As Children In Front Of Campfires And Fireplaces - The Ghost Stories That Engaged Us.

Hello! Look At Me. Hello! I Am So Zen. This Is Blood. This Is Nothing. Hello. Everything Is Nothing, And It's So Cool To Be Enlightened. Like Me.

After You Find Out All The Things That Can Go Wrong, Your Life Becomes Less About Living And More About Waiting.

A Baby Is Such A Blank Slate, Like Training The Understudy For A Role You're Planning To Leave. You Truly Hope Your Replacement Will Do The Play Justice, But In Secret You Want Future Critics To Say You Played The Character Better.

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.

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

There Is Nothing Special In The World. Nothing Magic. Just Physics.

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

Abortion Occurs So Frequently In My Stories. Abortion Sort Of Synthesizes Both Sex And Death. To Have Sex And Death Placed As Close To One Another As Possible Is Always A Goal Of Mine.

I Remember Selling My First Short Story And Thinking, Oh My God, I Sold Something For Fifty Dollars! That Gives Me The Authority To Say I'm A Writer And To Actually Write More Things! It Legitimized The Activity.

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

I Don't Want To Die Without Any Scars.

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

New Carpet Will Exude Poisonous Formaldehyde For Up To Two Years After It'd Been Laid. I Know The Feeling.

Inspiration Needs Disease, Injury, Madness.

The Liberator Who Destroys My Property Is Fighting To Save My Spirit. The Teacher Who Clears All Possessions From My Path Will Set Me Free.

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Margaret Bourke-White

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