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I'm Always Looking For Context In Which People Tell Stories. In "fight Club" It's These Support Groups For Dying People, And Then In "choke" It's 12-step Recovery Groups. In One Novel It's Artists' Colonies, In Another Novel It's A Diary Form That Submariners' Wives Typically Keep So That When Their Husband Comes Back From Serving On A Submarine They Have An Accounting Of Their Spouse's Time. So I'm Always Looking For, Number One, A Non-fiction Context - Because You Can Tell A More Outrageous Story If You Use A Non-fiction Form.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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I'm Always Looking For

Chuck Palahniuk

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I'm Always Looking For Context In Which People Tell Stories. In "fight Club" It's These Support Groups For Dying People, And Then In "choke" It's 12-step Recovery Groups. In One Novel It's Artists' Colonies, In Another Novel It's A Diary Form That Submariners' Wives Typically Keep So That When Their Husband Comes Back From Serving On A Submarine They Have An Accounting Of Their Spouse's Time. So I'm Always Looking For, Number One, A Non-fiction Context - Because You Can Tell A More Outrageous Story If You Use A Non-fiction Form.

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

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

Greatest Treasure

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

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

That's Why I Write, Because Life Never Works Except In Retrospect. You Can't Control Life, At Least You Can Control Your Version.

Sometimes The Past Seems Too Big For The Present To Hold.

No, It's Not Fair, But What Makes Earth Feel Like Hell Is Our Expectation That It Should Feel Like Heaven. Earth Is Earth. Dead Is Dead. You'll Find Out For Yourself Soon Enough. It Won't Help The Situation For You To Get All Upset.

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.

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.

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.

Writing Is Like Sex, If It's Difficult You're Not Doing It Right.

The Joke Is, We All Have The Same Punchline.

I Am The All-singing, All-dancing Crap Of This World.... I Am The Toxic Waste By-product Of God's Creation.

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

You're Always Haunted By The Idea You're Wasting Your Life.

I've Been Choking To Death For Years. By Now This Should Be Easy.

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

What We Call Chaos Is Just Patterns We Haven’t Recognized. What We Call Random Is Just Patterns We Can't Decipher.

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.

I Haven't Shoplifted Since I Was 13.

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

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

I Ran. I Ran Until My Muscles Burned And My Veins Pumped Battery Acid. Then I Ran Some More.

A Good Story Isn't The One That Shuts Everyone Down And Sort Of Leaves Them In Silent Awe. A Good Story Is One That, Even Before You Finish The Anecdote, You Can See Their Eyes Shining Because It Has So Resonated With Something From Their Own Lives That Everyone In The Group Has A Version Of The Same Story And They Cannot Wait To Tell It, And That They're Going To Compete To Make Their Version Even More Extreme Than Your Version. So Your Version Is Just A Seed.

I Admire Addicts. In A World Where Everybody Is Waiting For Some Blind, Random Disaster Or Some Sudden Disease, The Addict Has The Comfort Of Knowing What Will Most Likely Wait For Him Down The Road. He's Taken Some Control Over His Ultimate Fate, And His Addiction Keeps The Cause Of His Death From Being A Total Surprise.

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

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.

Sex Pretty Much Cures Everything.

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

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.

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

The Last Story You Should Write Is The Most Important Story. You Should Start With A Story That Is Just An Amusing, Entertaining, Fun Story To Write And Learn Your Writing Chops With The Least Important Things Before You Start Applying Them To The Most Important Things.

In The World I See You Are Stalking Elk Through The Damp Canyon Forests Around The Ruins Of Rock Feller Center. You'll Wear Leather Clothes That Will Last You The Rest Of Your Life. You'll Climb The Wrist-thick Kudzu Vines That Wrap The Sears Towers. And When You Look Down, You'll See Tiny Figures Pounding Corn, Laying Stripes Of Venison On The Empty Car Pool Lane Of Some Abandoned Superhighways.

Cults Make People Sing So Hard For So Long - Because It Over-oxygenates The Blood And Sets Them Up To Faint.

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

Could You Hold The Chainsaw A Bit Closer To Your Mouth, Please?

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

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.

Proof That No Investment Is Yours Forever.

The Only Reason Why We Ask Other People How Their Weekend Was Is So We Can Tell Them About Our Own Weekend.

By The Time You're Thirty, Your Worst Enemy Is Yourself.

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.

The Cancer I Don't Have Is Everywhere Now.

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

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

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.

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

Every Masterpiece Is Just Dirt And Ash Put Together In Some Perfect Way.

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?

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

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

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

I'm Only Confrontational With My Friends.

"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.

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.

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

The Future Is Just Wasted On Some People.

Invisible Monsters

Language Is What Books Do Very Well And Movement Is What Movies Does Very Well.

You Have Endless Ways You Can Commit Suicide Without Dying Dying.

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

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

Chasing Rainbows

Our Real Discoveries Come From Chaos, From Going To The Place That Looks Wrong And Stupid And Foolish.

Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You Can Imagine It.

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.

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.

Kids, She Says. When They’re Little, They Believe Everything You Tell Them About The World. As A Mother, You’re The World Almanac And The Encyclopedia And The Dictionary And The Bible, All Rolled Up Together. But After They Hit Some Magic Age, It’s Just The Opposite. After That, You’re Either A Liar Or A Fool Or A Villain.

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

I'm Always Trying To Reach A Transcendent Point, A Romantic Point, But Reach It In A Really Unconventional Way, A Really Profane Way. To Get To That Romantic, Touching, Heartbreaking Place, But Through A Lot Of Acts Of Profanity.

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

You're Safe Because You're So Trapped Inside Your Culture. Anything You Can Conceive Of Is Fine Because You Can Conceive Of It.

Yes, I Kidnapped That Lindberg Baby.

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

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.

The World Is The Cradle And Your Trap.

I Think In A Way, You're Doomed, Once You Can Envision Something. You're Sort Of Doomed To Make It Happen. I've Found That The Moment I Can Envision Leaving A Relationship, That's Usually The Moment That The Relationship Starts To Fall Apart.

History Is Nothing Except Monsters Or Victims. Or Witnesses.

Ever Since College, I Make Friends. They Get Married. I Lose Friends.

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.

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.

His Saliva Tasted Like The Wet Dicks Of Ten Thousand Lonely Truck Drivers.

No, None Of Us Seem So Very Real. We're Only Supporting Characters In The Lives Of Each Other. Any Real Truth, Any Precious Fact Will Always Be Lost In A Mountain Of Shattered Make-believe.

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.

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.

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

It's Interesting Because When David Fincher Was Making "fight Club," He Said, "it's A Romance." And It Really Is. Almost Everything I Ever Write Is Just A Romance. And That Needed To Be Sort Of Pointed Up At The End Of "fight Club." The Film Has A Very Different Ending Than The Book Does.

People Don't Want Their Lives Fixed. Nobody Wants Their Problems Solved. Their Dramas. Their Distractions. Their Stories Resolved. Their Messed Cleaned Up. Because What Would They Have Left? Just The Big Scary Unknown.

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.

If You Haven't Already Noticed, All My Books Are About A Lonely Person Looking For Some Way To Connect With Other People.in A Way, That Is The Opposite Of The American Dream: To Get So Rich You Can Rise Above The Rabble, All Those People On The Freeway Or, Worse, The Bus.

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

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

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

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.

Where I'm Is One Of Those Stair Climbing Machines The Agent Has Installed. You Climb And Climb Forever And Never Get Off The Ground. You're Trapped In Your Hotel Room. It's The Mystical Sweat Love Lodge Experience Of Our Time, The Only Sort Of Indian Vision Quest We Can Schedule Into Our Daily Planner.our Stair Master To Heaven.

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.

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.

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.

A Good Story Should Make You Laugh, And A Moment Later Break Your Heart.

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

We're All Of Us Haunted And Haunting.

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

Tyler's Words Coming Out Of My Mouth. I Used To Be Such A Nice Person.

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

Without Animals, There Would Be No Humanity. In A World Of Just People, People Will Mean Nothing . . .

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

I Don't Know The Difference Between What I Want And What I'm Trained To Want.

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

Suicide Is Very Contagious.

I Don't Want To Die Without Any Scars.

We Hear The Ambient Noise Of Children Singing. We Hear Lions And Tigers Roar. Hyenas Laugh. Some Jungle Bird Or Howler Monkey Declares Its Existence, Screeching A Maniac's Gibberish. Our Entire World, Always Doing Battle Against The Silence And Obscurity Of Death.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

The Girls You Meet Are Never Very Far From Their Worst-case Scenario.

Worst Case Scenario

The Truth Is, Every Son Raised By A Single Mom Is Pretty Much Born Married. I Don't Know, But Until Your Mom Dies It Seems Like All The Other Women In Your Life Can Never Be More Than Just Your Mistress.

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.

A Good Story Should Change The Way You See The World.

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

Coping Mechanisms

Pretty Much Always. We Need To Tell The Story Of Our Life To Someone.

About My Boss, Tyler Tells Me, If I'm Really Angry, I Should Go To The Post Office And Fill Out A Change-of-address Card And Have All His Mail Forwarded To Rugby, North Dakota.

How Folks Lay Claim To A Loved One Is They Give You A Name Of Their Own. They Figure To Label You As Their Property.

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

Believe In Me And Die Forever.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

No Matter What Happens, It’s Always Now.

People Are All Over The World Telling Their One Dramatic Story And How Their Life Has Turned Into Getting Over This One Event. Now Their Lives Are More About The Past Than Their Future.

You Turn Up Your Music To Hide The Noise. Other People Turn Up Their Music To Hide Yours. You Turn Up Yours Again. Everyone Buys A Bigger Stereo System. This Is The Arms Race Of Sound. You Don't Win With A Lot Of Treble.

If You Flee From The Things You Fear, There's No Resolution.

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

You're Doomed At Being You.

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?

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

Every Day: Wear Sunblock. Cover Your Gray. Do Not Go Insane. Eat Less Fats And Sugars. Do More Sit-ups. Don’t Start Forgetting Stuff. Trim The Hair In Your Ears. Take Calcium. Moisturize. Every Day. Freeze In Time To Stay In One Place Forever. Do Not Get Frigging Old.

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

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

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

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

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

Love Is Bullshit. Emotion Is Bullshit.

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

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

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

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

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

Fight Club Novel

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.

This Was Freedom. Losing All Hope Was Freedom.

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

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.

It's All Mirror, Mirror On The Wall Because Beauty Is Power The Same Way Money Is Power The Same Way A Gun Is Power.

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

This Is The Worst Problem With Living History Museums. They Always Leave The Best Parts Out. Like Typhus. And Opium. And Scarlet Letters. Shunning. Witch-burning.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

This Is Your Life And Its Ending One Moment At A Time.

Hysteria Is Impossible Without An Audience. Panicking By Yourself Is The Same As Laughing Alone In An Empty Room. You Feel Really Silly.

Because Everything Up To Now Is A Story And Everything After Now Is A Story.

Most Of The Laugh Tracks On Television Were Recorded In The Early 1950’s. These Days, Most Of The People You Hear Laughing Are Dead.

The Feeling Is Less Like An Ending Than Just Another Starting Point.

When I First Started Writing, There Was No Way I'd Write A Sex Scene. That Just Seemed Impossible. That's Why In "fight Club" All The Sex Happens Off-screen. It's All Just A Noise On The Other Side Of The Wall Or The Ceiling. I Just Couldn't Bring To Write In A Scene Like That. So One Of The Challenges With "choke" Was I Wanted To Write Sex Scenes Until I Was Really Comfortable Just Writing Them In A Very Mechanical Way.

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.

So If Reality Is All A Spell, And You Don't Really Want What You Think You Want... If You Have No Free Will. You Don't Really Know What You Know. You Don't Really Love Who You Only Think You Love. What Do You Have Left To Live For?

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

They Assume She Was Once Gorgeously Beautiful. Because Now She Looks So—bad.

Why Is It You Feel Like A Dope If You Laugh Alone, But That's Usually How You End Up Crying?

Generations Have Been Working In Jobs They Hate, Just So They Can Buy What They Don't Really Need.

Also Consider That Someday, When You’re Dead And Rotted, Kids With Their Baby Teeth Will Sit In Their Time-geography Class And Laugh About How Stupid You Were.

The Bad News Is We Don't Have Any Control. The Good News Is We Can't Make Any Mistakes.

Are These Things Really Better Than The Things I Already Have? Or Am I Just Trained To Be Dissatisfied With What I Have Now?

You Couldn't Have Small, Dying Children In A Movie Without Really Bringing Everyone Down, But You Can In Comics.

Stop The Excessive Shopping And Masturbation. Quit Your Job. Start A Fight. Prove You're Alive. If You Don't Claim Your Humanity, You Will Become A Statistic.

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.

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

To A Certain Extent Everybody Has A Certain Sort Of Way Of Being A Persona That They Learn How To Be When They're Really Little. They Figure Out That If They're Really Funny, Or Really Pretty, Or If They Work Really, Really Hard Or Are Really Smart, Then That's What's Going To Get Them By. That Is What Is Going To Make People Like Them.

Welcome To Fight Club. The First Rule Of Fight Club Is: You Do Not Talk About Fight Club. The Second Rule Of Fight Club Is: You Do Not Talk About Fight Club! Third Rule Of Fight Club: If Someone Yells “stop!”, Goes Limp, Or Taps Out, The Fight Is Over. Fourth Rule: Only Two Guys To A Fight. Fifth Rule: One Fight At A Time, Fellas. Sixth Rule: The Fights Are Bare Knuckle. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Weapons. Seventh Rule: Fights Will Go On As Long As They Have To. And The Eighth And Final Rule: If This Is Your First Time At Fight Club, You Have To Fight.

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

Art Never Comes From Happiness.

At Some Point, Your Memories, Your Stories, Your Adventures, Will Be The Only Things You'll Have Left.

If You're Male And You're Christian And Living In America, Your Father Is Your Model For God. And If You Never Know Your Father, If Your Father Bails Out Or Dies Or Is Never At Home, What Do You Believe About God?

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

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

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.

At First, The New Owner Pretends He Never Looked At The Living Room Floor.

At The Last Minute, I Couldn't Wear The Hitler Mustache Because Tiger Stripe Ate It; And Then I Didn't Want To Take My Kitty And Risk His Coughing Up Some Big Nazi Hairball On Someone's Front Stoop.

Why Do I Do Anything?' She Says. 'i'm Educated Enough To Talk Myself Out Of Any Plan. To Deconstruct Any Fantasy. Explain Away Any Goal. I'm So Smart I Can Negate Any Dream.

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

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

Yes, These Are Bruises From Fighting And I'm Okay With That.

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

Nothing Shows You The Straight Line From Here To Death Like A List.

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Erin Morgenstern

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