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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.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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Griping Isn't The Same

Chuck Palahniuk

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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.

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

Let Me Be The Ring Leader In Your Guilt Gang-bang.

If The Living Are Haunted By The Dead, Then The Dead Are Haunted By Their Own Mistakes.

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

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.

It's So Hard To Forget Pain, But It's Even Harder To Remember Sweetness. We Have No Scar To Show For Happiness. We Learn So Little From Peace.

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

Good As It Gets

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.

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

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

If Death Meant Just Leaving The Stage Long Enough To Change Costume And Come Back As A New Character, Would You Slow Down? Or Speed Up?

You Can’t Fool People Into Loving You.

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

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

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

Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You Can Imagine It.

Look Up At The Stars And You're Gone.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Say Let Me Never Be Complete, I Say May I Never Be Content,i Say Deliver Me From Swedish Furniture, I Say Deliver Me From Clever Arts, I Say Deliver Me From Clear Skin And Perfect Teeth,i Say You Have To Give Up! I Say Evolve, And Let The Chips Fall Where They May!

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

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

Since We Do Operate In A Binary World, If There's Something That Cannot Be This Or That, It Drives Us Crazy.

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.

Part Of Her Doing Suicide Intervention Is My Caseworker Has To Mix Me Another Gin And Tonic.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

There's Worse That People Can Steal From You Than Money.

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.

The Whole World Is A Disaster Waiting To Happen.

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

Your Heart Is My Piñata.

You Can Tell A More Over-the-top Incredible Story If You Use A Nonfiction Form.

The Evil Queen Was Stupid To Play Snow White's Game. There's An Age Where A Woman Has To Move On To Another Kind Of Power. Money, For Example. Or A Gun.

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.

People Didn't Know Who I Was Or Why I Was There, So They Started Inventing Stories About Me. I Was A Registered Sex Offender And I'd Just Been Released From Prison And Was Being Forced To Do Community-service Work. I Was A Murderer, An Arsonist - All These Horrific Things Had Been Projected On Me Because No One Knew What To Make Of This White Guy Who Showed Up And Made Toast At 5 O'clock Every Morning.

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.

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

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.

Everyone Is Equal And Everyone Is Forced To Participate; You Can't Just Be A Spectator.

Everyone Is Equal

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

Game Shows Are Designed To Make Us Feel Better About The Random, Useless Facts That Are All We Have Left Of Our Education.

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

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.

Some Little Part Of Themselves For Someone In The Future To Discover. Maybe A Thought. We Were Here. We Built This. A Reminder.

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 Don't Do Much More Than Organise Other People's Ideas And Insights And Thoughts, And Sort Of Harvest Them, And Inventory Them And Present Them.

It's Funny How You Never Think About The Women You've Had. It's Always The Ones Who Get Away That You Can't Forget.

Real Smarts Begin When You Quit Quoting Other People.

In The Big Factory Of Perfecting Human Souls, The Earth Was Kind Of Tumbler. The Sale As The Kind People Use To Polish Rocks. All Souls Come Here To Rub The Sharp Edges Off Each Other. This Isn't Suffering. It's Erosion.

You Can Spend Your Whole Life Building A Wall Of Facts Between You And Anything Real.

Everybody's Trying To Make Every Minute Of The Present Last Forever. Preserve Every Second.

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.

I Still Love Him So Much I'll Hide Any Amount Of Conjugated Estrogen In His Food. So Much I'll Do Anything To Destroy Him.

I Still Love Him

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.

He Was Assaulting The World By Assaulting Himself.

There Are Worse Things Than Finding Your Wife And Child Dead. You Can Watch The World Do It. You Can Watch Your Wife Get Old And Bored. You Can Watch Your Kids Discover Everything In The World You've Tried To Save Them From. Drugs, Divorce, Conformity, Disease. All The Nice Clean Books, Music, Television. Distraction.

We All Have Some Proper Noun To Blame.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Unless We Have That Moment Of Chaos, Followed By The Emotional Release Of Realization, Nothing Will Be Remembered.

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.

When We Don't Know Who To Hate, We Hate Ourselves.

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.

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

The Bigger The Mistake Looks, The Better Chance I'll Have To Break Out And Live A Real Life. Our Real Discoveries Come From Chaos. - Brandy Alexander

Besides, Hysteria Is Only Possible With An Audience.

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

I Am Nothing, And Not Even That.

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.

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

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

It Seems That So Much Writing Is Being Done In The Nineteenth-century Model, Where Every Connection Has To Be Thoroughly Explained.

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

Quitting Your Job

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.

We Just Had A Near-life Experience!

Life Experience

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

Love And Life Belongs To Great Risk.

Your Birth Is A Mistake You'll Spend Your Whole Life Trying To Correct.

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

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.

And The More She Could Imagine This Island, The Less She Liked The Real World. The More She Could Imagine The People, The Less She Liked Any Real People.

I See The Strongest And The Smartest Men Who Have Ever Lived... And These Men Are Pumping Gas And Waiting Tables.

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

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

Hey, You Created Me! I Didn't Create Some Loser Alter-ego To Make Myself Feel Better. Take Some Responsibility!

The Future You Have, Tomorrow, Won't Be The Same Future You Had, Yesterday.

Just Each Of Us Being Me, Me, Me First. The Murderer, The Victim, The Witness Each Of Us Thinks Our Role Is The Lead. Probably That Goes For Anybody In The World.

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

A Writer’s Job Is To Cultivate What Can Go Wrong.

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

We Went Sailing One Time, And He Wore A Speedo, And Any Smart Woman Should Know That Means Bisexual At Least.

As Young People We Want Something To Slow Us Down And Keep Us Trapped In One Place Long Enough To Look Below The Surface Of The World. That Disaster Is A Car Crash Or A War. To Make Us Sit Still. It Can Be Getting Cancer Or Getting Pregnant. The Important Part Is How It Seems To Catch Us By Surprise. That Disaster Stops Us From Living The Life We'd Planned As Children - A Life Of Constant Dashing Around.

To Merely Observe Your Culture Without Contributing To It Seems Very Close To Existing As A Ghost.

Discovering The 'impossible' Ending To A New Book Makes Me Sick With Joy And Relief.

I'm In Love. So Kill Me.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

But If You Tell Folks You're A College Student, Folks Are So Impressed. You Can Be A Student In Anything And Not Have To Know Anything. Just Say Toxicology Or Marine Biokinesis, And The Person You're Talking To Will Change The Subject To Himself. If This Doesn't Work, Mention The Neural Synapses Of Embryonic Pigeons.

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

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

What Do You Do When Your Entire Identity Is Destroyed In An Instant? How Do You Cope When Your Whole Life Story Turns Out To Bw Wrong?

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

I Don't Want To Die Without Any Scars.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Every Character Sees The World Through A Framework Of Education And Experience That They're Proud Experts About. To Write A Character, Find Out What They Know Best, And Then You'll Know How They'll Describe A "hot Day." Or A "pretty Girl."

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

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

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 Think, In A Way, I Invented The Term 'fight Club' And That These Things Have Always Existed, But They Never Really Had A Label. Nobody Had A Language To Apply To Them. I Created That Language In Two Words And I've Been Paid A Great Deal Of Money For Inventing Two Words And Labeling Something That Has Always Been Around.

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.

You Realize You Have No Control Over How You're Perceived.

We Can Spend Our Lives Letting The World Tell Us Who We Are. Sane Or Insane. Saints Or Sex Addicts. Heroes Or Victims. Letting History Tell Us How Good Or Bad We Are. Letting Our Past Decide Our Future. Or We Can Decide For Ourselves. And Maybe It's Our Job To Invent Something Better.

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

Marla Tells Me How In The Wild You Don't See Old Animals Because As Soon As They Age, Animals Die. If They Get Sick Or Slow Down, Something Stronger Kills Them. Animals Aren't Meant To Get Old. Marla Lies Down On Her Bed And Undoes The Tie On Her Bathrobe, And Says Our Culture Has Made Death Something Wrong. Old Animals Should Be An Unnatural Exception. Freaks.

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.

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

During The First World War, I Told Her, Hitler Had Been A Runner, Delivering Messages Between The German Trenches, And He Was Disgusted By Seeing His Fellow Soldiers Visit French Brothels. To Keep The Aryan Bloodlines Pure,and Prevent The Spread Of Venereal Disease, He Commissioned An Inflatable Doll That Nazi Troops Could Take Into Battle. Hitler Himself Designed The Dolls To Have Blond Hair And Large Breasts. The Allied Firebombing Of Dresden Destroyed The Factory Before The Dolls Could Ever Go Into Wide Distribution.

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.

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.

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

Imagine How You’d Feel If Your Whole Life Turned Into A Job You Couldn’t Stand.

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.

His Computer Password Is "password.

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.

Everyone's In Their Own Personal Coma.

Maybe Humans Are Just The Pet Alligators That God Flushed Down The Toilet.

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

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

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.'

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.

You Buy Furniture. You Tell Yourself, This Is The Last Sofa I Will Ever Need In My Life. Buy The Sofa, Then For A Couple Years You're Satisfied That No Matter What Goes Wrong, At Least You've Got Your Sofa Issue Handled. Then The Right Set Of Dishes. Then The Perfect Bed. The Drapes. The Rug. Then You're Trapped In Your Lovely Nest, And The Things You Used To Own, Now They Own You.

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

You Know, The Condom Is The Glass Slipper Of Our Generation. You Slip It On When You Meet A Stranger. You Dance All Night, Then You Throw It Away.

We Thought All This Teaching Was To Make Us Smart. What It Did Was Make Us Stupid. With All The Little Facts We Learned, We Never Had The Time To Think.

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

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.

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.

The Only Difference Between Suicide And Martyrdom Is Press Coverage.

Who You Are Moment To Moment Is Just A Story.

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.

In A World Where Vows Are Worthless.where Making A Pledge Means Nothing. Where Promises Are Made To Be Broken, It Would Be Nice To See Words Come Back Into Power.

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

Only After Disaster Can We Be Resurrected.

Fight Club Book

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.

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.

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

They Should Let Some People Into The Library By Prescription Only

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

More Than One Side? You're Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Jackass!

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

For Sure, Even The Worst Blow Job Is Better Than, Say, Sniffing The Best Rose ... Watching The Greatest Sunset. Hearing Children Laugh.

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

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.

You Tell Yourself That Noise Is What Defines Silence. Without Noise, Silence Would Not Be Golden. Noise Is The Exception. Think Of Deep Outer Space, The Incredible Cold And Quiet Where Your Wife And Kid Wait. Silence, Not Heaven, Would Be Reward Enough.

The Same Architect Who Designed The Seattle Fair's Futuristic Science Center, With Its Lacy Gothic Arches And Spires, Minoru Yamasaki, Was Hired To Design The Twin Towers Of The World Trade Center. Seattle Had Promised Fairgoers A Glimpse Of The World That Would Exist In 2001. That Year Eventually Unfolded As Something Less Than The Dream We'd Imagined.

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

Inspirational Life

There Will Always Be An Underground.

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.

This Is Our World Now, And Those Ancient People Are Dead.

Maybe It's Our Sins That Give God Consolation When He Finally Has To Give Us Cancer.

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

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.

We Can Spend Our Lives Letting The World Tell Us Who We Are…or We Can Decide For Ourselves.

Optimism Is The First Symptom That Any Disease Is Fatal.

You Have To Keep Recycling Yourself.

I Hate How I Don't Feel Real Enough Unless People Are Watching.

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

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

Emotionally, In Our Minds, We Get So Filled With Resentments Where We've Got A Story About Absolutely Everything.

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

The Gyms You Go To Are Crowded With Guys Trying To Look Like Men, As If Being A Man Means Looking The Way A Sculptor Or An Art Director Says.

We'll Never Be As Young As We Are Tonight.

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.

Rant Would Tell People: 'you're A Different Human Being To Everybody You Meet.

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.

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