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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.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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I Want Out Of

Chuck Palahniuk

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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.

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Everything Is Still Falling Apart.

The Whole World Is A Disaster Waiting To Happen.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

I'm Not So Much A Good Friend As I'm The Savior Who Wants You To Worship Him Forever.

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

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

The Ultimate Joke Was The Idea That Capitalism Would Eat Its Own Feces In Order To Make Money, That Would Make Fun Of Itself If Capitalism Thought There Was A Buck In It.

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

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

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

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

Angel Says That Rich People Don't Like To Tolerate Much. Money Gives You Permission To Just Walk Away From Everything That Isn't Pretty And Perfect. You Can't Put Up With Anything Less Than Lovely. You Spend Your Life Running, Avoiding, Escaping.

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?

They Should Let Some People Into The Library By Prescription Only

The Worst Part Of Writing Fiction Is The Fear Of Wasting Your Life Behind A Keyboard. The Idea That, Dying, You'll Realize You Only Lived On Paper. Your Only Adventures Were Make-believe, And While The World Fought And Kissed, You Sat In Some Dark Room Masturbating And Making Money.

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

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.

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.

I'm Only Confrontational With My Friends.

In Good Old Colonial Dunsboro, Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill. It Is In Most Jobs.

You Could Go Church And You Could Describe Your Worst Behavior, Your Worst Self, And Despite Your Worst Behavior You Would Be Forgiven And Then Redeemed And Then Accepted Back Into The Community Through Communion. So You Didn't Have To Carry This Burden Your Entire Life. Once A Week You Went Someplace You Went Someplace Where You Could Really Look Terrible And Be Loved Despite How Terrible You Were.

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

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.

Any Time Some Well-meaning Person Forces You To Demonstrate You Have No Talent And Rubs Your Nose In The Fact You're A Failure At The Only Dream You Ever Had, Take Another Drink.

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.

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

This Isn't About Guilt Or Innocence, He Says. The Dinosaurs Weren't Morally Good Or Bad, But They're All Dead.

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.

The Weather Today Is Partly Angry, Leading To Resignation And Ultimatums.

If There Had Been Zombies On The Iceberg When The Titanic Hit It, That Would Have Made A Much Better Movie.

You’re Training A New Employee,' Says Mrs. Clark, 'to Take Over Your Boring Old Job.' When You Raise A Child.

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

I Thought Why Not Write A Kind Of Mystery, Murder, Thriller Book, But Use Romance Language Where The Language Plays Completely Against The Very Dark Subject Matter, That Very Strange Murderous Plot, But Use That Harlequin Romance Language.

Parenthood Is The Opiate Of The Masses.

This Was Freedom. Losing All Hope Was Freedom.

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

How This Feels Is I'm Just Another Task In God's Daily Planner: The Renaissance Pencilled In For Right After The Dark Ages. The Information Age Is Scheduled Immediately After The Industrial Revolution. Then The Post-modern Era, Then The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And Between The Big Events, The Earthquakes And Tidal Waves, God's Got Me Squeezed In For A Cameo Appearance. Then Maybe In Thirty Years, Or Maybe Next Year, God's Daily Planner Has Me Finished.

I Know So Many Writers Who Are A Hundred Times Better Than Me And Have Longer, Greater Ideas Than Mine, But They Gave Up; They Stopped. The Biggest Talent You Can Have Is Determination.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Minute Of Perfection Was Worth The Effort. A Moment Was The Most You Could Ever Expect From Perfection.

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

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

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

And It [fight Club Novel] Was Written So General That My Father Thought I Was Writing About His Father, And My Boss Thought I Was Writing About His Boss. People Really Put Themselves, You Know, In The Shoes Of The Narrator.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Forget The Past

No Matter What Happens, It’s Always Now.

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

Deliver Me, Tyler, From Being Perfect And Complete.

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

I'm Living The Life I Love, I Tell Myself, And Loving The Life I Live. I Tell Myself: I Deserved This. This Is Exactly What I Wanted.

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.

A Baby Is Such A Blank Slate, Like Training The Understudy For A Role You're Planning To Leave. You Truly Hope Your Replacement Will Do The Play Justice, But In Secret You Want Future Critics To Say You Played The Character Better.

If It Comes Down To A Choice Between Being Unloved And Being Vulnerable And Sensitive And Emotional, Then You Can Just Keep Your Love.

The Liberator Who Destroys My Property Is Fighting To Save My Spirit. The Teacher Who Clears All Possessions From My Path Will Set Me Free.

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

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

We Are Not Special. We Are Not Crap Or Trash, Either. We Just Are. We Just Are, And What Happens Just Happens.

Fight Club Book

We All Have Some Proper Noun To Blame.

It's Nice To See Something More Pathetic Than I Feel Right Now.

My First Time I Jacked Off, I Thought I'd Invented It. I Looked Down At My Sloppy Handful Of Junk And Thought, This Is Going To Make Me Rich.

Funny Relationship

The Rules That I Adhere To Are The Rules Of Minimalism. And Those Rules Kind Of Force Writing To Be More Filmic... To Have The Immediacy And Accessibility Of Film So That The Reader Really Has To Fill In A Lot Of The Details.

People Die', She Says. 'people Tear Down Houses. But Furniture, Fine, Beautiful Furniture, It Just Goes On And On, Surviving Everything.' She Says, 'armoires Are The Cockroaches Of Our Culture.

Control The Things You Can Control. As For The Rest - God Bless It All.

Things You Can Control

We Don't Need Women. There Are Plenty Other Things In The World To Have Sex With, Just Go To A Sexaholics Meeting And Take Notes. There's Microwaved Watermelons. There's The Vibrating Handles Of Lawn Mowers Right At Crotch Level. There's Vacuum Cleaners And Beanbag Chairs. Internet Sites. All Those Old Chat Room Sex Hounds Pretending To Be Sixteen-year-old Girls. For Serious, Old Fbi Guys Makes The Sexiest Cyberbabes.

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

Someday You Will Die, And Until You Know That, You're Useless To Me.

If Your Body Is A Temple, You Can Pile Up Too Much Deferred Maintenance. If Your Body Is A Temple, Mine Was A Real Fixer-upper.

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.

You Can Only Hold A Smile For So Long, After That It's Just Teeth.

An Important Part Of Building A New Culture Was Allowing People To Complain About Their Past. At First, The More They Complained, The Worse The Past Would Seem. But By Venting, People Could Start To Resolve The Past. By Bitching And Bitching And Bitching, They Could Exhaust The Drama Of Their Own Horror Stories. Grow Bored. Only Then Could They Accept A New Story For Their Lives. Move Forward.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.'

Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill.

History Is Nothing Except Monsters Or Victims. Or Witnesses.

I Can Become Someone Else, Not Out Of Pressure And Desperation, But Merely Because A New Life Sounds Fun Or Interesting Or Joyful.

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.

That Guy Behind Me On The Airplane? He's Been Kicking My Seat Because He Hates Me. He's Kicking My Seat Because He Hates Me And I'm Gonna Kill Him. When We Get Off This Plane, I'm Gonna Make Eye Contact. I'm Gonna Kill That Guy. And All Of That Is Just Stuff In My Head, But It's Good To Get Rid Of That Stuff.

On A Night Without Moon Or Stars You Can't See A Thing, But You Can Imagine Anything.

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

My Goal Is More To Be Remembered. They'll Remember This Thing And Like It In The Future. The Trick Is To Stay Remembered Long Enough For That To Happen.

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

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.

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

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

I Haven't Shoplifted Since I Was 13.

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

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

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.

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

Things You Love

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The Trick To Forgetting The Big Picture Is To Look At Everything Close-up. The Shortcut To Closing A Door Is To Bury Yourself In The Details. This Is How We Must Look To God. As If Everything's Fine.

As A Lower-class Kid, I Was Raised To Think Success Would Be Owning Stuff. Having That Great Job, Too. Now I Find My Parents' Dream Was Wrong. You Never Really Own Anything. And You're Never Really Finished As A Person.

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

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.

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.

Get Married Before The Sex Gets Boring Or You'll Never Get Married.

The Short Stories Tend To Be A Journalistic Gathering Of Anecdotes That Are Put Together To Make Something Larger.

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

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.

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

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

Everything You See Is Based On Fact Of A Event Thats Already Happen, Even Light Only Travels So Fast.

How Much Can You Know About Yourself If You've Never Been In A Fight?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Without True Chaos, We Can Never Have True Peace.

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

We Kind Of Deny The Stages Of Life.

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.

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

The Damaged Love The Damaged. True Fact.

Folks Build A Reputation By Attacking You While You’re Alive - Or Praising You After You Ain’t.

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.

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

I Take Pens And I Write On The Inside Of My Arm. When I'm With People And Somebody Says A Really Fascinating Anecdote, Or Fact, Or Phrase, I'll Write It On The Inside Of My Arm. At The End Of The Day, I'll Take The Very Best Things That Are On My Arm And I'll Copy Them Into A Notebook That I Always Carry And Only When The Weather Is Absolutely Terrible Will I Really Key The Very Best Of That Notebook Into The Computer. At That Point, It's All Sort Of Censored Twice - Only The Best Things Go From The Arm To The Book And Only The Best Things Go From The Book To The Computer.

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

My Theory Is That Church Used To Be That Place. Instead Of Being A Place Where You Went To Look Good, It Was A Place Where You Could Risk Going Every Week To Look Your Worst.

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.

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

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.

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak.

Some Stories, You Use Up. Others Use You Up.

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

If You Look At Old Pictures, Irene Casey Is So Pretty. Not Just Young, But Pretty The Way You Look When Your Face Goes Smooth, The Skin Around Your Eyes And Lips Relaxed, The Pretty You Only Look When You Love The Person Taking The Picture.

Your Handwriting. The Way You Walk. Which China Pattern You Choose. It's All Giving You Away. Everything You Do Shows Your Hand. Everything Is A Self Portrait. Everything Is A Diary.

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.

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

There's A Moment In Every Book When The Book Turns And It Surprises Me.

Proof That No Investment Is Yours Forever.

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.

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

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

Scratch Any Fortune And You'll Find Blood Only A Generation Or Two Back...child Labor In Mines Or Mills...slavery. Drugs. Stock Swindles. Wasting Nature With Clear-cuts, Pollution, Harvesting To Extinction. Monopolies. Disease. War. Every Fortune Comes Out Of Something Unpleasant.

I'm Giving You My Life To Prove To Myself I Can, I Really Can Love Somebody. Even When I'm Not Getting Paid, I Can Give Love And Happiness And Charm. You See, I Can Handle The Baby Food And The Not Talking And Being Homeless And Invisible, But I Have To Know That I Can Love Somebody. Completely And Totally, Permanently And Without Hope Of Reward, Just As An Act Of Will, I Will Love Somebody.

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.

The First Step To Eternal Life Is You Have To Die.

Even If You Tell Yourself "today I'm Going To Drink Coffee The Wrong Way ... From A Dirty Boot." Even That Would Be Right, Because You Chose To Drink Coffee From That Boot. Because You Can Do Nothing Wrong. You Are Always Right. Even When You Say, "i'm Such An Idiot, I'm So Wrong..." You're Right. You're Right About Being Wrong. You're Right Even When You're An Idiot. No Matter How Stupid Your Idea, You're Doomed To Be Right Because It's Yours.

If Anything I Try To Write Something That Would Be More Difficult To Film. I Tend To See Film As Competition And Would Like Instead To Do What Books Do Best.

There Are Worse Things You Can Do To The People You Love Than Kill Them. The Regular Way Is Just To Watch The World Do It. Just Read The Newspaper.

You Know How Both Life And Porno Movies End. The Only Difference Is Life Starts With The Orgasm.

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.

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.

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.

It's Because We're So Trapped In Our Culture, In The Being Of Being Human On This Planet With The Brains We Have, And The Same Two Arms And Legs Everybody Has. We're So Trapped That Any Way We Could Imagine To Escape Would Be Just Another Part Of The Trap. Anything We Want, We're Trained To Want.

Besides, It Happens Fast For Some People And Slow For Some, Accidents Or Gravity, But We All End Up Mutilated.

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

What Would Tyler Durden Do?

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.

With Every Lecture, You’re Forced To Look Again At Every Choice You’ve Made Over The Lesson-by-lesson Chain Of Your Entire Life. And After All These Years, You See How Little You Have To Work With, How Limited Your Life And Education Have Been. How Scant Was Your Courage And Curiosity. Not To Mention Your Expectations.

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.

You Don't Have Ideas When You're Sitting In That Sort Of Sterile Little Place, And You're Not Around People. The Most Boring Scenes Are The Scenes Where A Character Is Alone. I Just Need That Dynamic Of Other People Around Me To Get My Work Done.

Even If I Overcompensate, Nobody Will Ever Want Me. Not Seth. Not My Folks. You Can’t Kiss Someone Who Has No Lips. Oh, Love Me, 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

If You Love Something Set It Free, But Don't Be Surprised If It Comes Back With Herpes.

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

I'm Fascinated By The Whole Issue Of Arousal Addiction, Which Seems To Be Mostly A Problem For Young Men.

We're All Of Us Haunted And Haunting.

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.

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

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

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

People Have To Really Suffer Before They Can Risk Doing What They Love.

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.

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

Which Is Worse, Hell Or Nothing?

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

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.

Every Generation Wants To Be The Last. Every Generation Hates The Next Trend In Music They Can't Understand. We Hate To Give Up Those Reins Of Our Culture. To Find Our Own Music Playing In Elevators. The Ballad For Our Revolution, Turned Into Background Music For A Television Commercial. To Find Our Generation's Clothes And Hair Suddenly Retro.

Television Commercials

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

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

The Old Rule About How A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever, In My Experience, Even The Most Beauteous Thing Is Only A Joy For About Three Hours, Tops. After That, She'll Want To Tell You All About Her Childhood Traumas. Part Of Meeting These Jail Girls Is It's So Sweet To Look At Your Watch And Know She'll Be Behind Bars In Half An Hour.

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Ignatius Of Loyola

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