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Find A Guy Who Calls You Beautiful Instead Of Hot, Who Calls You Back When You Hang Up On Him, Who Will Lie Under The Stars And Listen To Your Heartbeat, Or Will Stay Awake Just To Watch You Sleep...wait For The Boy Who Kisses Your Forehead, Who Wants To Show You Off To The World When You Are In Sweats, Who Holds Your Hand In Front Of His Friends, Who Thinks You're Just As Pretty Without Makeup On. One Who Is Constantly Reminding You Of How Much He Cares And How Lucky His Is To Have You....the One Who Turns To His Friends And Says, 'that's Her.'

-Chuck Palahniuk

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Find A Guy Who

Chuck Palahniuk

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Find A Guy Who Calls You Beautiful Instead Of Hot, Who Calls You Back When You Hang Up On Him, Who Will Lie Under The Stars And Listen To Your Heartbeat, Or Will Stay Awake Just To Watch You Sleep...wait For The Boy Who Kisses Your Forehead, Who Wants To Show You Off To The World When You Are In Sweats, Who Holds Your Hand In Front Of His Friends, Who Thinks You're Just As Pretty Without Makeup On. One Who Is Constantly Reminding You Of How Much He Cares And How Lucky His Is To Have You....the One Who Turns To His Friends And Says, 'that's Her.'

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In A World Where Billions Believe Their Deity Conceived A Mortal Child With A Virgin Human, It's Stunning How Little Imagination Most People Display.

People Take Conventional Ways That Other People Have Always Decorated Their Cars, And Use Them As Ways Of Giving Other People Permission To Approach Them.

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.

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

Good As It Gets

Demons Are Former Celebrities Who Prey On Their Own Insecurities.

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

I Wish I Had The Courage Not To Fight And Doubt Everything... I Wish, Just Once, I Could Say, 'this. This Is Good Enough. Just Because I Choose It.

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!

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

Do You Know Why Most Survivors Of The Holocaust Are Vegan? It's Because They Know What It's Like To Be Treated Like An Animal.

You Realize That People Take Drugs Because It's The Only Real Personal Adventure Left To Them In Their Time-constrained, Law-and-order, Property-lined World. It's Only In Drugs Or Death We'll See Anything New, And Death Is Just Too Controlling.

Find Joy In Everything You Choose To Do. Every Job, Relationship, Home... It's Your Responsibility To Love It, Or Change It.

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.

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

You're A Product Just As Much. A Product Of A Product. The People Who Design Cars, They're Products, Your Teachers, Products. The Minister In Your Church, Another Product.

I Take A Lot Of Flak From The Counter-establishment For Selling Out.

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

A Certain Number Of People Have To Live Their Lives Outdoors Between 8 A.m. And 8 P.m., And A Certain Number Of People Can Only Leave Their Homes Between 8 P.m. And 8 A.m. So Basically, Public Life Has To Be Lived In These Shifts, In Order For Everyone To Fit On The Streets Because There's Just No More Room For Any More Infrastructure, Any More Highways. So It Polarizes The Community Into Day People And Night People, And It Becomes Sort Of A Metaphor For Racism And Classism.

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

Drugs Or Overeating Or Alcohol Or Sex, It Was All Just Another Way To Find Peace. To Escape What We Know. Our Education. Our Bite Of The Apple.

What Kind Of Dining Set Defines Me As A Person?

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

It Only Takes One Mistake And Nothing Else You Ever Do Will Matter. No Matter How Hard You Work Or How Smart You Become, You'll Always Be Known For That One Poor Choice.

I Am Nothing, And Not Even That.

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

The Weather Today Is An Increasing Trend Towards Denial.

The Unreal Is More Powerful Than The Real. Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You Can Imagine It. Because Its Only Intangible Ideas, Concepts, Beliefs, Fantasies That Last. Stone Crumbles. Wood Rots. People, Well, They Die. But Things As Fragile As A Thought, A Dream, A Legend, They Can Go On And On. If You Can Change The Way People Think. The Way They See Themselves. The Way They See The World. You Can Change The Way People Live Their Lives. That's The Only Lasting Thing You Can Create.

It's So Quiet This High Up, The Feeling You Get Is That You're One Of Those Space Monkeys. You Do The Little Job You're Trained To Do. Pull A Lever. Push A Button. You Don't Understand Any Of It, And Then You Just Die.

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

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

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

Reality Means You Live Until You Die. The Real Truth Is Nobody Wants Reality.

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

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

I Believe In Something. But I Don't Believe That Anything Can Hold A Grudge For Long Enough To Condemn Its Creation To Eternal Punishment. Nobody Can Hold A Grudge That Long, Even God.

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

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

In A City This Size, Every Year, Hundreds Of Husbands Walk Away. Kids Leave Home. Wives Escape. People Disappear.

Maybe It's Just A Daughter's Job To Piss Off Her Mother.

When We Die, These Are The Stories Still On Our Lips. The Stories We’ll Only Tell Strangers, Someplace Private In The Padded Cell Of Midnight. These Important Stories, We Rehearse Them For Years In Our Head But Never Tell. These Stories Are Ghosts, Bringing People Back From The Dead. Just For A Moment. For A Visit. Every Story Is A Ghost.

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

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

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

I Write Because It's A Way Of Presenting Something Without Having To Be There.

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.

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

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Didn't I Realize That Each Of Us Is A Sacred, Unique Snowflake Of Special Unique Specialness?

I Would Say Any Behavior That Is Not The Status Quo Is Interpreted As Insanity, When, In Fact, It Might Actually Be Enlightenment. Insanity Is Sorta In The Eye Of The Beholder.

...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.

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When Someone Walks In And You Say "a Six-foot-tall Man," You Miss The Opportunity To Describe What A Six-foot-tall Man Would Look Like To Your Narrator, Because How The Narrator Describes A Six-foot-tall Man Says More About The Narrator Than About The Man.

Just Let Yourself Be Broken And Humiliated. Just Your Whole Life, Keep Telling People, I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry.

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.

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.

We've Taken The World Apart But We Have No Idea What To Do With The Pieces.

A Moment Is All You Can Expect From Perfection.

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

You Are Not Special. You Are Not A Beautiful Or Unique Snowflake. You're The Same Decaying Organic Matter As Everything Else.

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

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

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If I Turn Up Suicided In The Morning, It Was Murder.

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You Realize That Our Mistrust Of The Future Makes It Hard To Give Up The Past.

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You'll Need To Suffer To Make Any Real Art.

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I Really Believe It's The Moments We Can't Talk About That Become The Rest Of Our Lives. It's The Moments We Can't Process By Telling A Story That Destroy Us In The End.

Reject The Basic Assumptions Of Civilization, Especially The Importance Of Material Possessions.

There's Still A Thousand Places I Haven't Gone To Die.

"this Isn’t Really Death," Tyler Says, "we’ll Be Legend. We Won’t Grow Old." I Tongue The Barrel Into My Cheek And Say, Tyler, You’re Thinking Of Vampires.

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.

Yes, Terrible Things Happen, But Sometimes Those Terrible Things - They Save You.

Yeah. Well. Whatever. You Can't Teach God Anything.

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No Matter How Much I Try And Hide This, Bit By Bit, I Start To Fall Apart.

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The Amazing Miracle Of Death, When One Second You're Walking And Talking, And The Next Second You're An Object.

She's So Thin She's Either Dying Or Rich.

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.

Be Famous. Be A Big Social Experiment In Getting What You Don't Want. Find Value In What We've Been Taught Is Worthless. Find Good In What The World Says Is Evil. I'm Giving You My Life Because I Want The Whole World To Know You. I Wish The Whole World Would Embrace What It Hates. Find What You're Afraid Of Most And Go Live There.

For Thousands Of Years, Human Beings Had Screwed Up And Trashed And Crapped On This Planet, And Now History Expected Me To Clean Up After Everyone. I Have To Wash Out And Flatten My Soup Cans. And Account For Every Drop Of Used Motor Oil. And I Have To Foot The Bill For Nuclear Waste And Buried Gasoline Tanks And Landfilled Toxic Sludge Dumped A Generation Before I Was Born.

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Every Woman Is Just A Different Kind Of Problem.

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.

Honest Is How I Want To Look. The Truth Doesn't Glitter And Shine.

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.

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.

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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.

This Is Less Teaching Than Damage Control. You May As Well Paint A House That’s On Fire.

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

Recycling And Speed Limits Are Bullshit. They're Like Someone Who Quits Smoking On His Deathbed.

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.

Nothing Happened, And Nothing Kept Happening.

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.

The Truth Is You Can Be Orphaned Again And Again And Again. The Truth Is, You Will Be. And The Secret Is, This Will Hurt Less And Less Each Time Until You Can't Feel A Thing. Trust Me On This.

It Takes A Lot To Get People Talking In Airplanes. But Once They Start Talking, You Just Can't Shut Them Up.

Funerals Are All Abstract Ceremony.

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

Waiting In Line

That If You Could Acquire Enough, Accomplish Enough, You’d Never Want To Own Or Do Another Thing. That If You Could Eat Or Sleep Enough, You’d Never Need More. That If Enough People Loved You, You’d Stop Needing Love.

There's A Terrible Dark Joy When The Only Person Who Knows All Your Secrets Is Finally Dead.

That’s The American Dream: To Make Your Life Into Something You Can Sell.

Everyone Holds A Certain Type Of Power. For Young People, It's Their Youth, Their Attractiveness, And Their Energy. But They're Terrified That As Those Qualities Fade, What Are They Going To Replace That Form Of Power With?

My Books Are More About People Experimenting With Different Identities And Social Models In A Short-term Way Before They Can Break Through To Something Authentic.

Don't Rush Or Force The Ending. All You Have To Know Is The Next Scene, Or The Next Few Scenes.

I Am A Writer And The Greatest Compliment I Can Get Is To Know That I've Contributed Language To The Culture, That I've Defined Something, Given It A Name. So I Think That Is One Of The Great Things A Writer Can Do.

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

I Have To Have Everything In My Life Completely Fixed And Perfect And Cleaned Up And I Have To Be Complete With Everyone In My Life And I Have Seven Days In Which To Do That. So I Might Make It To Day Three Or Four, But I've Never Made It All The Way To Day Seven.

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

We've Spent So Much Time Judging What Other People Created That We've Created Very, Very Little Of Our Own.

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

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

If You Make People Laugh Too Much, Their Blood Becomes - I Believe It Is Acidic As Opposed To Alkaline. It Changes The Oxygen Level In The Blood, And People Are Likelier To Pass Out At That Point.

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.

The World Is The Cradle And Your Trap.

Proof That No Investment Is Yours Forever.

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

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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.

The Only Funny Part About Colonial Dunsboro Is Maybe It's Too Authentic, But For All The Wrong Reasons. This Whole Crowd Of Losers And Nutcases Who Hide Out Here Because They Can't Make It In The Real World, In Real Jobs — Isn't This Why We Left England In The First Place? To Establish Our Own Alternate Reality. Weren't The Pilgrims Pretty Much The Crackpots Of Their Time? For Sure, Instead Of Just Wanting To Believe Something Different About God's Love, The Losers I Work With Want To Find Salvation Through Compulsive Behaviors.

Listen Up. Rant Would Tell People: ‘you’re A Different Human Being To Everybody You Meet.’ Sometimes Rant Said, ‘you Only Ever Is In The Eyes Of Other Folks.’ If You Were Going To Carve A Quote On His Grave, His Favorite Saying Was: ‘the Future You Have Tomorrow Won’t Be The Same Future You Had Yesterday.

Nevertheless, If You Ask Me, Most People Have Children Just As Their Own Enthusiasm About Life Begins To Wane. A Child Allows Us To Revisit The Excitement We Once Felt About, Well... Everything. A Generation Later, Our Grandkids Bump Up Our Enthusiasm Yet Again. Reproducing Is A Kind Of Booster Shot To Keep Us Loving Life.

We Live And We Die And Anything Else Is Just A Delusion.

It's Okay To Cry As Long As You're Faking It.

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

Without True Chaos, We Can Never Have True Peace.

It's Not Love Or Anything, But I Think I Like You, Too.

There's Always The Chance You Could Die Right In The Middle Of Your Life Story.

After A Good-looking Boy Gives You Rabies Two, Three Times, You'll Settle Down And Marry Somebody Less Exciting For The Rest Of Your Life

My Inventory Of People Who Can Save Me Is Down To Just Me.

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.

Doesn't Reincarnation Strike You As Just Another Form Of Procrastination?

Procrastination

Some Soap Opera, You Know, Real People Pretending To Be Fake People With Made-up Problems Being Watched By Real People To Forget Their Real Problems.

Did You Ever Think About Life As A Metaphor For Television?

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.

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

The Photographer In My Head Says: Give Me Peace. Flash. Give Me Release. Flash.

For The First Time In Longer Than I Can Remember, I Feel Peaceful. Not Happy. Not Sad. Not Anxious. Not Horny. Just All The Higher Parts Of My Brain Closing Up Shop. The Cerebral Cortex. The Cerebellum. That's Where My Problem Is. I'm Now Simplifying Myself. Somewhere Balanced In The Perfect Middle Between Happiness And Sadness. Because Sponges Never Have A Bad Day.

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

She Drank A Glass Of Wine And Looked For Something New To Ruin With Her Lack Of Talent.

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

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.

As A Culture, We Believe That If We Kill Something, We've Killed The Issue. That's Why So Many Books End With Death, Why So Many Plays End With Death, Because It's Full Resolution. I'm Always Curious To Know What Happens After Romeo And Juliet Die. In A Way, That's The Beginning Of The Story. Maybe Beyond The Story Is Even Better.

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

I've Met God Across His Long Walnut Desk With His Diplomas Hanging On The Wall Behind Him, And God Asks Me, 'why?' Why Did I Cause So Much Pain? Didn't I Realize That Each Of Us Is A Sacred, Unique Snowflake Of Special Unique Specialness? Can't I See How We're All Manifestations Of Love? I Look At God Behind His Desk, Taking Notes On A Pad, But God's Got This All Wrong. We Are Not Special. We Are Not Crap Or Trash, Either. We Just Are. We Just Are, And What Happens Just Happens. And God Says, 'no, That's Not Right.' Yeah. Well. Whatever. You Can't Teach God Anything.

Telling Some Stories, Miss Leroy Says, Is Committing Suicide.

I Like To Get People Moving And Jumping. I Think It's Good To Add More Emotion And Chaos.

Give Me Rampant Intellectualism As A Coping Mechanism.

Coping Mechanisms

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

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.

Love And Life Belongs To Great Risk.

All God Does Is Watch Us And Kill Us When We Get Boring. We Must Never, Ever Be Boring.

Having Nothing To Lose Is The New Wealth.

Nothing To Lose

Kids Grow Up Connected To Nothing These Days, Plugged In And Living Lives Boosted To Them From Other People.

No Matter How Careful You Are, There's Going To Be The Sense You Missed Something, The Collapsed Feeling Under Your Skin That You Didn't Experience It All. There's That Fallen Heart Feeling That You Rushed Right Through The Moments Where You Should've Been Paying Attention. Well, Get Used To That Feeling. That's How Your Whole Life Will Feel Some Day.

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

Don't Do This. I Love You. Don't Shut Me Out.

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.

I Don't Want To Die Without Any Scars.

Only After Disaster Can We Be Resurrected.

Fight Club Book

I Am The Cause Of All My Upsets. I Am My Worst Enemy.

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.

The Unreal Is More Powerful Than The Real. Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You Can Imagine It. Because It's Only Intangibles, Ideas, Concepts, Beliefs, Fantasies That Last. Stone Crumbles. Wood Rots. People, Well, They Die.

With My Eyes Closed, I Ask If She Knows How This Will All Turn Out. "long-term Or Short-term?" She Asks. Both. "long-term," She Says, "we're All Going To Die. Then Our Bodies Will Rot. No Surprise There. Short-term, We're Going To Live Happily Ever After." Really? "really," She Says. "so Don't Sweat It.

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

Those Who Can Forget The Past Are Way Ahead Of The Rest Of Us.

Forget The Past

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.

There's An Old Saying: 'no Piece Of Writing Is Ever Finished, It's Just Abandoned.' But My Own Rule Is: No Piece Of Work Is Done Until You Want To Kill Everyone Involved In The Publishing Process, Especially Yourself.

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.

A Male Chauvinist Pig Isn't Born, He's Made, And More And More Of Them Are Being Made By Women.

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

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.

Marla's Philosophy Of Life, She Told Me, Is That She Can Die At Any Moment. The Tragedy Of Her Life Is That She Doesn't.

If You Start In The Pit Of Despair With These Profane, Awful Things, Even A Glimmer Of Hope Or Awareness Is Going To Occur That's Much Brighter Coming From This Dark, Awful Beginning.

You Have No Idea What It Is Like To Constantly Disappoint People. You See It The Moment You Meet Them. You See In Their Eyes That They Expected Something So Entirely Different, And Here They Are Meeting You.

I Might Be A Touch Of A Sadist And A Little Bit Jejune... But At Least I'm Not A Victim, Not Any Longer. I Hope. I Hope, Therefore I Am.

Shotgunning Anybody In This Room Would Be The Moral Equivalent Of Killing A Car, A Barbie Doll, A Vacuum Cleaner. We're All Such Products.

Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You Can Imagine It.

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.

And If You Can Find Any Way Out Of Our Culture, Then That's A Trap Too. Just Wanting To Get Out Of The Trap Reinforces The Trap.

Invisible Monsters

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