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I'm Not Really Into Comfort Books. There Are Too Many Of Those As It Is. Just Sort Of Narcotic Books, Like My Grandmother Used To Read. They Have Value Like Paxil Has Value, But There's Plenty Of Them In The World Already. There's A Shortage Of Confronting, Stimulating, Exciting Books.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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I'm Not Really Into

Chuck Palahniuk

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I'm Not Really Into Comfort Books. There Are Too Many Of Those As It Is. Just Sort Of Narcotic Books, Like My Grandmother Used To Read. They Have Value Like Paxil Has Value, But There's Plenty Of Them In The World Already. There's A Shortage Of Confronting, Stimulating, Exciting Books.

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For This Moment, Nothing Matters. Look Up Into The Stars And You're Gone.

After Long Enough, Everyone In The World Will Be You Enemy.

Tyler Gets Me A Job As A Waiter, After That Tyler's Pushing A Gun In My Mouth And Saying, The First Step To Eternal Life Is You Have To Die.

We’d Turn Our Lives Into A Terrible Adventure. A True-life Horror Story With A Happy Ending. A Trial We’d Survive To Talk About.

Ask Yourself: What Did I Eat For Breakfast Today? What Did I Eat For Dinner Last Night? You See How Fast Reality Fades Away?

I Think Standardization Is Really The First Step To Something Being Commodified.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

They Should Let Some People Into The Library By Prescription Only

Where Every Day Doesn't Start With An Alarm Clock And End With The Television.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Want Out Of The Labels. I Don't Want My Whole Life Crammed Into A Single Word. A Story. I Want To Find Something Else, Unknowable, Some Place To Be That's Not On The Map. A Real Adventure.' A Spinx. A Mystery. A Blank. Unknown. Undefined.

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

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

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

I Hate How On Tv They Have To Fill So Many Minutes. It Means They Have To Put In Anything, And By Doing So They Sort Of Trivialize News; News Becomes This Commodity That They Need To Fill Dead Time Between Commercials With.

The Joke Is, We All Have The Same Punchline.

Just Let Your Hand Drop; And Let Fate Decide For You.

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

What Would Tyler Durden Do?

We Have Pain And Hate And Love And Joy And War In The World Because We Want Them.

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

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.

It Is A Hundred-year-old Witch Book, Bound In Human Skin And Probably Written In Ancient Cum...you Lick It!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Our Culture Has Made Us All The Same. No One Is Truly White Or Black Or Rich, Anymore. We All Want The Same. Individually, We Are Nothing.

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.

Some Of The Best Ideas I Get Seem To Happen When I'm Doing Mindless Manual Labor Or Exercise. I'm Not Sure How That Happens, But It Leaves Me Free For Remarkable Ideas To Occur.

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

If There’s Any Trick To Doing A Job You Hate . . . Mrs. Clark Says It’s To Find A Job You Hate Even More.

Everyone Has Something Wrong. And For A While, Her Heart Just Sort Of Flat Lined.

He Was Assaulting The World By Assaulting Himself.

I Want My Whole Life Lined With A Topical Anesthetic.

People Will Listen To You Only When They Know You're Dying, Otherwise They're Just Waiting For Their Turn To Talk.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Inspirational Life

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.

Any 'artist' Makes A Living By Expressing What Others Can't - Because They're Unaware Of Their Feelings, They're Too Afraid To Express Those Feelings, Or They Lack The Skills To Communicate And Be Understood.

The First Rule Of Fight Club Is You Don't Talk About Fight Club.

You Humiliate A Rich Person And They're Still Rich. You Humiliate A Brilliant Person And They're Still Smart. A Person Who Is Well Connected Is Still The King Of England. But If You Humiliate A Young Person, You Take Away The Only Form Of Power They Have.

The Whole World Is A Disaster Waiting To Happen.

We're All Going Overnight Express Delivery Straight To Hell.

Of All The Priceless Objects Left Behind, This Is What We Rescue. These Artifacts. Memory Cues. Useless Souvenirs. Nothing You Could Auction. The Scars Left From Happiness.

Want To Talk Third-wave Feminism, You Could Cite Ariel Levy And The Idea That Women Have Internalized Male Oppression. Going To Spring Break At Fort Lauderdale, Getting Drunk, And Flashing Your Breasts Isn't An Act Of Personal Empowerment. It's You, So Fashioned And Programmed By The Construct Of Patriarchal Society That You No Longer Know What's Best For Yourself. A Damsel Too Dumb To Even Know She's In Distress.

If You Take My Stuff Apart, You'll Find My Choruses Of Repetitions Are Picked Up Almost Verbatim From Kurt Vonnegut, And My Distanced Fracture Quality Is All From Amy Hempel, Who's Probably My Favourite Writer.

Disaster Is A Natural Part Of My Evolution Toward Tragedy And Dissolution.

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.

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

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.

Just For The Record, The Weather Today Is Calm And Sunny, But The Air Is Full Of Bullshit.

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.

This Was Freedom. Losing All Hope Was Freedom.

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I Can Manage My Own Pain. I Can Drink. I Can Go To The Doctor And Get A Prescription. I Can Exercise. I Can Write A Story About It. I've Done It A Million Times! But I Don't Want To See The People I Love Tortured And Suffering.

When Deep Space Exploration Ramps Up, It'll Be The Corporations That Name Everything, The Ibm Stellar Sphere, The Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.

To Preserve Yourself As The Center Of The World, To Stay Your Own Best Authority On Everything, Your Own Expert On All Topics, Infallible, Omniscient. Always, Every Time Of The Month, Forever: Use Birth Control.

The Big Reason Why Folks Leave A Small Town,' Rant Used To Say, 'is So They Can Moon Over The Idea Of Going Back. And The Reason They Stay Put Is So They Can Moon About Getting Out.' Rant Meant That No One Is Happy, Anywhere.

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

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.

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

I'm Only Confrontational With My Friends.

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.

Make Me Into Anything, But Just Love Me.

Invisible Monsters

Yes, I Kidnapped That Lindberg Baby.

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.

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.

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. He's Making Sure Your Imagination Withers. Until It's As Useful As Your Appendix. He's Making Sure Your Attention Is Always Filled. And This Being Fed, It's Worse Than Being Watched. With The World Always Filling You, No One Has To Worry About What's In Your Mind. With Everyone's Imagination Atrophied, No One Will Ever Be A Threat To The World.

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

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.'

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.

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak.

And If You Believe That We Really Have Free Will, Then You Know That God Can't Really Control Us. And Since God Can't Control Us, All God Does Is Watch And Change Channels When He Gets Bored.

Think Of Spoiled Cat Food And Ulcerated Cankers And Expired Donor Organs. That's How Beautiful She Looks.

I Know That When A Supersexy Older Girl With Hips And Breasts And Nice Hair Wants To Take Off Your Glasses And To Paint You A Smoky Eye She's Merely Trying To Enroll You In A Beauty Contest She's Already Won. It's A Kind Of Slummy, Condescending Gesture, Like When Rich People Ask Poor People Where They Summer. To Me, This Smacks Of A Blatant, Insensitive "let Them Eat Cake" Type Of Chauvinism.

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.

Potassium Cyanide," Says The Talent Wrangler As She Leans Over To Pick Up A Paper Napkin Off The Floor. "found Naturally In The Cassava Or Manioc Roots Native To Africa, Used To Tint Architectural Blueprints In The Form Of The Deep-blue Pigment Known As Prussian Blue. Hence The Shade 'cyan' Blue.

A Moment Is All You Can Expect From Perfection.

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

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

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

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.

Schools Of Science And Physics Replacing Each Other At A Faster And Faster Rate. Just The Nature Of Our World Is Constant Revision, Constant...negation Of Previous Beliefs, And So...the Whole World Is A Twist Ending. Every Week Is A Twist Ending.

The Weather Today Is An Increasing Trend Towards Denial.

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 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.

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.

Picture The Moment When Your Mom And Dad First Saw You As Something Other Than A Pretty, Tiny Version Of Them. You As Them, But Improved. Better Educated. Innocent. Then Picture When You Stopped Being Their Dream.

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

Falling In Love

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.

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

If You Can Change The Way People Think. The Way They See Themselves. The Way They See The World. If You Do That, You Can Change The Way People Live Their Lives. That's The Only Lasting Thing You Can Create.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest And Nobody Is There To Hear It, Doesn't It Just Lie There And Rot?

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

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.

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

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

Sometimes The Very Best Way To Deal With Unpleasant Things Is To Depict Them In Ways That Allow People To Laugh At Them And Destroy The Power Of Unsayable Things, Rather Than Refusing To Acknowledge Them.

A Shadow Of A Reflection Of An Image Of An Illusion.

It's Just The Biggest Mistake I Could Think To Make

Biggest Mistake

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

You Can Say Anything If Enough People Will Listen.

Invisible Monsters

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.

You Can't Base Your Life On The Past Or The Present. You Have To Tell Me About Your Future.

A Couple Drinks. A Couple Aspirin. Repeat.

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.

Everyone Thinks Their Whole Life Should Be At Least As Much Fun As Masturbation.

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

Sex Pretty Much Cures Everything.

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

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.

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 Know That Old Phrase ‘those Who Don’t Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It’? Well, I Think Those Who Remember The Past Are Even Worse Off.

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

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

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 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.

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

Intellectual Culture Seems To Separate High Art From Low Art. Low Art Is Horror Or Pornography Or Anything That Has A Physical Component To It And Engages The Reader On A Visceral Level And Evokes A Strong Sympathetic Reaction. High Art Is People Driving In Volvos And Talking A Lot. I Just Don't Want To Keep Those Things Separate. I Think You Can Use Visceral Physical Experiences To Illustrate Larger Ideas, Whether They're Emotional Or Spiritual. I'm Trying To Not Exclude High And Low Art Or Separate Them.

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

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.

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

You Have A Class Of Young Strong Men And Women, And They Want To Give Their Lives To Something. Advertising Has These People Chasing Cars And Clothes They Don't Need. Generations Have Been Working In Jobs They Hate, Just So They Can Buy What They Don't Really Need. We Don't Have A Great War In Our Generation, Or A Great Depression, But We Do, We Have A Great War Of The Spirit. We Have A Great Revolution Against The Culture. The Great Depression Is Our Lives. We Have A Spiritual Depression.

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.

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

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

A Short Story Is Something That You Can Hold In Your Mind. You Can Really Analyze How The Entire Thing Works, Like A Machine

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?

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

Coping Mechanisms

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

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

Forget The Past

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

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

So Often With Beginning Writers, The Story That They Want To Start With Is The Most Important Story Of Their Life - My Molestation, My This, My Horrible Drug Addiction - They Want To Tell That Most Important Story, And They Don't Have The Skills To Tell It Yet, So It Ends Up Becoming A Comedy. A Powerful Story Told Poorly Becomes Funny, It Just Makes People Laugh Behind Their Hands.

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.

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

Optimism Is The First Symptom That Any Disease Is Fatal.

The Little Boy Smiled Back At All The Angry Faces Glaring In At Him. And The Little Boy Blew Kisses.

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

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

The Damaged Love The Damaged. True Fact.

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

I Used Rebellion As A Way To Hide Out. We Use Criticism As A Fake Participation.

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

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

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

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.

Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You Can Imagine It.

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

Give Me Romance. Flash. Give Me Denial.

The Things You Used To Own, Now They Own You.

Fight Club Book

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

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

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

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

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

We're The Culture That Cried Wolf.

Nothing Feels As Awful As Pouring Your Heart Out To Some Talk Therapist, Then Realizing This So-called Professional Is Actually Vastly Stupid And You've Just Professed Your Most Secret Secrets To Some Goon Who's Wearing One Brown Sock And One Blue Sock.

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

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

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.

After You Hear Even The Shortest Great Story, It Should Fill You With A Little Bit Of Fear.

Do We Have Free Will, Or Do The Mass Media And Our Culture Control Us, Our Desires And Actions, From The Moment We’re Born?

This Is How It Is With Insomnia. Everything Is So Far Away, A Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy. The Insomnia Distance Of Everything, You Can't Touch Anything And Nothing Can Touch You.

Women Are Already Born So Far Ahead Ability-wise. The Day Men Can Give Birth, That's When We Can Start Talking About Equal Rights.

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

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

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

Every Woman Is Just A Different Kind Of Problem.

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.

Mylife Might Be Little And Boring, But At Least It’s Mine - Not Some Assembly-line, Secondhand, Hand-me-down Life.

What I Want Is To Be Needed. What I Need Is To Be Indispensable To Somebody. Who I Need Is Somebody That Will Eat Up All My Free Time, My Ego, My Attention. Somebody Addicted To Me. A Mutual Addiction.

I Haven't Had A Tv In 10 Years, And I Really Don't Miss It. 'cause It's Always So Much More Fun To Be With People Than It Ever Was To Be With A Television.

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.

If You Worry About Disaster All The Time, That's What You're Going To Get.

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

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

We've All Been Raised On Television To Believe That One Day We'd All Be Millionaires, And Movie Gods, And Rock Stars. But We Won't. And We're Slowly Learning That Fact. And We're Very, Very Pissed Off.

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.

As The Stupidest Person In The Room, I Always Had The Most To Gain.

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Oscar De La Renta

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