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"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."

-Chuck Palahniuk

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"getting Fired," Tyler Says,

Chuck Palahniuk

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"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."

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More From Chuck Palahniuk

Sundays Tend To Be A Day Where Just I Do Nothing But Visit People. It's Kind Of Like Trick-or-treating.

You Are Not A Beautiful And Unique Snowflake... This Is Your Life, And It's Ending One Minute At A Time.

When Nobody Will Look At You, You Can Stare A Hole In Them. Picking Out All The Little Details You'd Never Stare Long Enough To Get If They'd Even Just Return Your Gaze, This, This Is Your Revenge.

Isn't A Kid Alive Who Doesn't Dream About Rewarding Her Folks, Or Punishing Them.

You Grow Up To Become Living Proof Of Your Parents' Limitations. Their Less-than Masterpiece.

It's Obsequious Little Nicety-nice Girls Like Me Who Allow Assholes To Run The World: Miss Harlot O'harlots, Billionaire Phony Tree Huggers, Hypocrite Drug-snorting, Weed-puffing Peace Activists Who Fund The Mass-murdering Drug Cartels And Perpetuate Crushing Poverty In Dirt-poor Banana Republics. It's My Petty Fear Of Personal Rejection That Allows So Many True Evils To Exist. My Cowardice Enables Atrocities.

I Went To Sexaholics Anonymous For Six Months. For Research. I Wanted To See The Structure Of The Groups, How They Were Conducted, And What The Atmosphere Was Like, And Also To Be Able To Describe The People As Human Beings, Rather Than As The Dirty Jokes That They Are In Our Culture.

The Joke Is, We All Have The Same Punchline.

Life Is Short, Death Is Forever

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

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.

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.

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

Griping Isn't The Same As Creating Something. Rebelling Isn't Rebuilding. Ridiculing Isn't Replacing. We've Taken The World Apart But We Have No Idea What To Do With The Pieces.

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.

When You're An Addict, You Can Go Without Feeling Anything Except Drunk Or Stoned Or Hungry. Still, When You Compare This To Other Feelings, To Sadness, Anger, Fear, Worry, Despair, And Depression, Well, An Addiction No Longer Looks So Bad. It Looks Like A Very Viable Option.

To Some Of Us, The Nights Are Too Long. To Some, The Days.

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.

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

Your Heart Is My Piñata.

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.

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

Love Is A Skill You Learn.

I Suppose It’s Comfort, Perhaps A Sense Of Self-control, Doing Worse Things To Yourself Than The World Will Ever Dare Inflict.

It’s A Fun Playtime. Please, Don’t Kill It With Big Words.

I Always Thought I'd Write When I Retired - When I Turned 65. But By The Time I Was 33, To Tell You The Truth, I Was A Little Bored With Drugs And Sex, And I Thought I'd Do The Writing Thing.

When You Don't Share Your Problems, You Resent Hearing The Problems Of Other People.

If I Can't Be Beautiful, I Want To Be Invisible.

Every High School Has Its Romeo And Juliet, One Tragic Couple. So Does Every Generation.

Brandy Is So Attractive You Could Chop Her Head Off And Put It On Blue Velvet In The Window At Tiffany's And Somebody Would Buy It For A Million Dollars.

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

His Computer Password Is "password.

And I Can't Stand The Idea Of Being Alone. I Can't Bear The Thought Of Being Free.

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 Can Kill A Lifetime Without Feeling Anything But Skin.

With The Novels, I Usually Start From Something In My Own Life That I Can't Resolve, So I Turn It Into A Metaphor And For Months Or Sometimes Years I'll Exhaust All Of My Emotional Reaction To This Issue By Making It Enormous On The Page.

The Best Fights Don't Occur Between Strangers. They Occur Between Friends Who Trust Each Other.

There's An Opposite To Déjà Vu. They Call It Jamais Vu. It's When You Meet The Same People Or Visit Places, Again And Again, But Each Time Is The First. Everybody Is Always A Stranger. Nothing Is Ever Familiar.

How You're Still Always Trapped. How Your Head Is The Cave, Your Eyes The Cave Mouth. How You Live Inside Your Head And Only See What You Want. How You Only Watch The Shadows And Make Up Your Own Meaning.

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

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.

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

This Is The Greatest Momemt Of Your Life And Your Out Missing It

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

You See, Life Only Turns Out Good Or Bad For Only A Little Bit. And Then It Turns Out Some Other Way.

My Writing Has To Excite People And Depict Or Include Their Experiences. That's Part Of My Process - To Go Out And Interact With People. It's Very Much Like An Archival Process. I Understand That The Brothers Grimm Would Go Out And Get People Talking So They Could Document Folk Tales That Weren't Being Documented Any Other Way. I Try To Offer A Little Bit Of Myself - Some Experience From My Life That Evokes Stories In Other People.

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

Coping Mechanisms

You Cannot Be The Person They Know And The Great, Glorious Person You Want To Become. Not At The Same Time.

For Years Now, I've Wanted To Fall Asleep. The Sort Of Slipping Off, The Giving Up, The Falling Part Of Sleep. Now Sleeping Is The Last Thing I Want To Do.

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

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

The Money Is In Television. Books Are Not The Dominant Medium Of Our Time, So Fewer People Will Create Them. In A Sad Way, Books Have Become A Form Of "comfort Food" We Expect To Lull Us To Sleep.

We'll Be Remembered More For What We Destroy Than What We Create.

Invisible Monsters

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

People Fall So In Love With Their Pain, They Can’t Leave It Behind. The Same As The Stories They Tell. We Trap Ourselves.

My Books Are Always About Someone Obtaining A Power To Replace The Previous Sort Of Power That They Held.

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

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

The Only Thing I Know Is Everything You Love Will Die.

Things You Love

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.

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

The First Step - Especially For Young People With Energy And Drive And Talent, But Not Money - The First Step To Controlling Your World Is To Control Your Culture. To Model And Demonstrate The Kind Of World You Demand To Live In. To Write The Books. Make The Music. Shoot The Films. Paint The Art.

Nobody Wants To Worship You If You Have The Same Problems, The Same Bad Breath And Messy Hair And Hangnails, As A Regular Person. You Have To Be Everything Regular People Aren’t. Where They Fail, You Have To Go All The Way. Be What People Are Too Afraid To Be. Become Whom They Admire. People Shopping For A Messiah Want Quality. Nobody Is Going To Follow A Loser. When It Comes To Choosing A Savior, They Won't Settle For Just A Human Being.

Taste Is Such A Changing Thing. Every Age Our Tastes Change. But The Things That Really Last Aren't Necessarily The Best Or The Worst Or The Most Loved Things, But They're The Things That Make The Biggest Impression.

The Difference Between How You Look And How You See Yourself Is Enough To Kill Most People. And Maybe The Reason Vampires Don’t Die Is Because They Can Never See Themselves In Photographs Or Mirrors.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Nothing Is Static. Even The Mona Lisa Is Falling Apart. Since Fight Club, I Can Wiggle Half The Teeth In My Jaw. Maybe Self-improvement Isn't The Answer. Maybe Self-destruction Is The Answer.

I Write Compulsively. I've Got So Many Ideas, And I Love To Do It So Much, I Can't Not Do It. I Write The Way Some People Do Drugs.

Which Is Worse, Hell Or Nothing?

There Are Worse Things You Can Do To People You Love Than Kill Them.

For Six Months I Couldn't Sleep. With Insomnia, Nothing's Real. Everything Is Far Away. Everything Is A Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy.

The Only Way To Find True Happiness Is To Risk Being Completely Cut Open.

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

We're All Of Us Haunted And Haunting.

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

We've Been Speaking English As A Second Language So Long That We've Forgotten It As Our First.

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.

Don’t Ask Me When Because I Don’t Remember, But Somewhere Along The Way I Keep Forgetting To Commit Suicide.

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.

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

Everything Is A Self-portrait. Everything Is A Diary.

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.

More And More We Are Taught Something Throughout Our Growing Up, Our Education, And Continuously, No Matter How Much We Believe In This Thing, Something Comes Up That Forces Us To Revise Our Entire Belief System. No Matter Whom You Idolize, It Turns Out That Louis Armstrong Collected Vast Amounts Of Pornography.

I Am Jack's Smirking Revenge.

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

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

My Writing Process Isn't A Very Organized Thing. The Actual Writing Part Is A Tiny Part Of My Life. I Often Write In Public. I Bring My Laptop Or Write Freehand In Notebooks. Then, I'll Read Through Them While I Exercise Or Walk The Dog. The Very Last Thing I Do Is The Sitting Alone At The Computer Part.

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.

What We Don't Understand We Can Make Mean Anything.

The Moment The World Declares A Person To Be Immortal, At That Moment The Person Will Strive To Prove The World Wrong. In The Face Of Glowing Press Releases And Reviews The Most Heralded Women Starve Themselves Or Cut Themselves Or Poison Themselves. Or They Find A Man Who's Happy To Do That For Him.

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

You Are Beautiful

No Matter How Much You Love Someone, You Still Want To Have You Own Way.

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.

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.

I Say Never Be Complete, I Say Stop Being Perfect, I Say Let... Lets Evolve, Let The Chips Fall Where They May.

Here In Your Mind You Have Complete Privacy. Here There's No Difference Between What Is And What Could Be.

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak. By Contrast, You Make People Feel Strong. You Save People By Letting Them Save You.

What I Mean Is Sometimes, For An Artist, Chronic Pain Can Be A Gift.

I Think That Young People Are Less Attached To Items And Objects Now. They're Less Attached To Consuming Things And Accruing Things Because They See It As A System That Doesn't Necessarily Work And Give Them A Sense Of Adulthood And Fulfillment. They're Much More In Tune With Wanting To Achieve A Skill, A Form Of Self-expression, Or A Body Of Knowledge That Fulfills The Same Function, Fulfills Their Adulthood.

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.

Picture Anybody Growing Up So Stupid He Didn't Know That Hope Is Just Another Phase You'll Grow Out Of.

That Quest For Something Pretty. A Cheat. A Cliche. Flowers And Christmas Lights, It's What We're Programmed To Love.

I'm Working Harder Than I Have Ever Worked In My Entire Life, But What The Hell, My Life Is My Job Now, And My Job Is My Life And That's The Way It Should Be.

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

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

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.

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 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.

From Famous Artists To Building Contractors, We All Want To Leave Our Signature. Our Lasting Effect. Your Life After Death. We All Want To Explain Ourselves. Nobody Wants To Be Forgotten.

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

On The Other Side Of The Handrail, The Hallway's Gray Marble Floor Looks As If We've Climbed A Stairway Through The Clouds.

No Matter How Many Luxuries You Get, Something Will Be Missing. No Matter How Carefully You Choose, You'll Never Be Totally Happy.

When You Go Out With A Drunk, You’ll Notice How A Drunk Fills Your Glass So He Can Empty His Own. As Long As You’re Drinking, Drinking Is Okay. Two’s Company. Drinking Is Fun. If There’s A Bottle, Even If Your Glass Isn’t Empty, A Drunk, He’ll Pour A Little In Your Glass Before He Fills His Own. This Only Looks Like Generosity.

All Object Printed: Love Me. Look Me. Million Speaking Objects,begging. Crown American Consumer With Power Of King, To Rescue Choose And Give Home Or Abandon Here For Expire.

You Ever Wonder When God's Coming Back With A Lot Of Barbecue Sauce?

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

Each Wedding Picture Was Less Of A Memento Than A Scar. Proof Of Some Horror Movie Scenario Katherine Kenton Has Survived.

Destruction Is Always An Attractive Idea. My Brother And I Used To Spend Weeks Making Models Of Cities So That We Could Destroy Them In 15 Minutes. There's A Fantastic Joy In Destroying Something That You've Meticulously Built. Then You're Free To Build A New Thing. Destruction And Creation They're Inseparable.

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.

Now Is The Autumn Of Our Ennui.

I Let Go. Lost In Oblivion. Dark And Silent And Complete. I Found Freedom. Losing All Hope Was Freedom.

Waiters Will Always Pee In Soup, People Will Always Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

I Realized That My Book Readings Were Boring Me. I Was Going To Go Up There And Read A Passage And Sleepwalk Through The Whole Event And I Needed To Make It More Interesting. I Wanted To Be Running And Jumping And Do Something So That The Event Would Be So Exciting. I Had To Trick Myself Into Having Fun Every Time.

Hey, Even The Mona Lisa Is Falling Apart.

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.

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

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

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

Inspirational Life

If You Ask Me, Reincarnation Is Just Another Way To Procrastinate.

Procrastination

Anytime My Work Can Coax Bodily Fluids Out Of Someone, I'm Happy.

Every Generation Wants To Be The Last.

You Kill Strangers Deliberately So You Don't Accidentally Kill The People You Love.

You Don’t Care Where I Live Or How I Feel, Or What I Eat Or How I Feed My Kids Or How I Pay The Doctor If I Get Sick, And Yes I Am Stupid And Bored And Weak, But I Am Still Your Responsibility.

No, Miss Wright Didn't Want To Meet Her Kid. To Her, That Relationship Was Just As Important, Just As Ideal And Impossible As It Would Be To The Child. She'd Expect That Young Man To Be Perfect, Smart, And Talented, Everything To Compensate For All The Mistakes That She'd Made. The Whole Wasted, Unhappy Mess Of Her Life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This Wasn't Any Mere Song And Dance; Here Was A Bold, Blaring Declaration Howling Itself Into The Empty Face Of Death.

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

Las Vegas Looks The Way You'd Imagine Heaven Must Look At Night.

The Truth Is, Wherever You Choose To Be, It's The Wrong Place.

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

That's What I Love About Fire, How It Would Kill Me As Quick As Anybody Else. How It Can't Know I'm Its Mother. It's So Beautiful And Powerful And Beyond Feeling Anything For Anybody, That's What I Love About Fire.

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

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

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.

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

I'm Always Identifying Some Fallacy In My Own Life. I'm Sort Of Making Fun Of Myself By Exploring And Unpacking Just Why I'm Sort Of Automatically Thrown To Be A Certain Way.

The Lower You Fall, The Higher You'll Fly.

To Repeat, The Way You Get To The Huge, Impossible Yes Is, You Start Collecting A Lot Of Easy, Small Yeses.

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.

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.

Every Time I Write Something, I Think, This Is The Most Offensive Thing I Will Ever Write. But No. I Always Surprise Myself.

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

There Are Only Patterns. Patterns On Top Of Patterns, Patterns That Affect Other Patterns, Patterns Hidden By Patterns, Patterns Within Patterns.

The Tiny Space, The Toilet, Two Hundred Strangers Just A Few Inches Away, It's So Exciting, The Lack Of Room To Maneuver, It Helps If You're Double-jointed. Use Your Imagination. Some Creativity And A Few Simple Stretching Exercises And You Can Be Knock, Knock, Knockin' On Heaven's Door. You'll Be Amazed How Time Flies.

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.

Today Is The Sort Of Day Where The Sun Only Comes Up To Humiliate You.

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

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

Most People Would Never Admit It, But They'd Been Bitching Since They Were Born. As Soon As Their Head Popped Out Into That Bright Delivery-room Light, Nothing Had Been Right. Nothing Had Been As Comfortable Or Felt So Good. Just The Effort It Took To Keep Your Stupid Physical Body Alive, Just Finding Food And Cooking It And Dishwashing, The Keeping Warm And Bathing And Sleeping, The Walking And Bowel Movements And Ingrown Hairs, It Was All Getting To Be Too Much Work.

The Only Difference Between Suicide And Martyrdom Is Press Coverage.

You Have A Choice. Live Or Die. Every Breath Is A Choice. Every Minute Is A Choice. To Be Or Not To Be.

If We Can Forgive What’s Been Done To Us... If We Can Forgive What We’ve Done To Others... If We Can Leave All Of Our Stories Behind. Our Being Villains Or Victims. Only Then Can We Maybe Rescue The World.

I'm Sorry If This All Seems A Little Rushed And Desperate. It Is.

Nothing Happened, And Nothing Kept Happening.

The Most Boring Thing In The Entire World Is Nudity. The Second Most Boring Thing Is Honesty.

Only In Death Will We Have Our Own Names Since Only In Death Are We No Longer Part Of The Effort. In Death We Become Heroes.

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.

You Realize That There's No Point In Doing Anything If Nobody's Watching. You Wonder, If There Had Been A Low Turnout At The Crucifixion, Would They Have Rescheduled?

The Only Thing I Shy Away From Is Non-consensual Violence. I Can't Write A Story Where Someone Is A Simple Victim Because It's Boring.

Our Generation Has Had No Great Depression, No Great War. Our War Is Spiritual. Our Depression Is Our Lives.

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

The World Can Be A Lot Better Than We Settle For. All You Have To Do Is Ask.

If It Is The Case That Love Does Survive Death, Then You May Consider This To Be A Happy Ending. Boy Meets Girl. Boy Gets Girl. Happily Ever After Or Not.

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.

We Come From A Generation Of People Who Need Their Tv Or Stereo Playing All The Time. These People So Scared Of Silence. These Soundaholics, These Quietophobics.

On A Long Enough Time Line, The Survival Rate For Everyone Drops To Zero.

I Think It's Just A Matter Of Time Before Everybody Realizes That I'm Kind Of A Romance Novelist ... That These Are All Stories About People Kind Of Falling Back In Love Or Struggling With Relationships. Even Fight Club Was Just A Big Romantic Ending.

The One Thing I Cannot Stand Is When I Do Interviews, When I Interview People, And I Listen To The Tapes And I Hear Myself Talking And Sort Of Stumble And Stammer, Or I Hear The Horrible Sound Of My Own Voice, Or God Forbid I See Myself On Video, There Is That Complete Revulsion With Seeing How I Occur In The World.

I Would Pay Snakes To Bite Her.

Think Of A Rock Polisher, One Of Those Drums, Goes Round And Round, Rolls Twenty-four/seven, Full Of Water And Rocks And Gravel. Grinding It All Up. Round And Round. Polishing Those Ugly Rocks Into Gemstones. That’s The Earth. Why It Goes Around. We’re The Rocks. And What Happens To Us—the Drama And Pain And Joy And War And Sickness And Victory And Abuse—why, That’s Just The Water And Sand To Erode Us. Grind Us Down. To Polish Us Up, Nice And Bright.

Everyone Wants To Be Tested And Challenged. Everyone Would Like A Good, Honest Fight To Exhaust Their Frustrations.

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

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

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

It's Not Enough To Be Numbered With The Grains Of Sand On The Beach And The Stars In The Sky.

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

Just For The Record, How I Feel Right Now Is Very Terrific.

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.

Being Tired Isn't The Same As Being Rich, But Most Times It's Close Enough.

Her Mom And Dad Are Both Doctors And Want Her To Follow Her Dream, Not Turn Out The Way They Have, No Matter How Much It Costs Them.

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.

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Walter De La Mare

Michael Jackson

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