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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.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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I Went To Sexaholics

Chuck Palahniuk

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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.

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

If I Could Wake Up In A Different Place, At A Different Time, Could I Wake Up As A Different Person?

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

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

As The Child Outlives The Father,so Must The Character Bury The Author.

Every Generation Wants To Be The Last.

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.

The More Things You Own, The More They Own You.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I Tagged A First-timer One Night At Fight Club. That Saturday Night, A Young Guy With An Angel’s Face Came To His First Fight Club, And I Tagged Him For A Fight. That’s The Rule. If It’s Your First Night In Fight Club, You Have To Fight. I Knew That So I Tagged Him Because The Insomnia Was On Again, And I Was In A Mood To Destroy Something 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.

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.

Nothing Was Solved When The Fight Was Over, But Nothing Mattered.

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

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.

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.

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

We All Have Some Proper Noun To Blame.

Abortion Occurs So Frequently In My Stories. Abortion Sort Of Synthesizes Both Sex And Death. To Have Sex And Death Placed As Close To One Another As Possible Is Always A Goal Of Mine.

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

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

Anybody's True Nature Is Bullshit. There Is No Human Soul. Emotion Is Bullshit. Love Is Bullshit.

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

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

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

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

I Need To Rebel Against Myself. It's The Opposite Of Following Your Bliss. I Need To Do What I Most Fear.

Believe In Yourself

So If You Think This Is Going To Save You...if You Think Anything Is Going To Save You...please Consider This Your Final Warning.

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.

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.

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

People Who Don't Want To Get On With Their Lives, And Don't Want To Accept Responsibility For The Direction Of Their Lives Want To Hang Out With Other People Who Don't Want To Accept Responsibility Or Move On, And So You Find That Your Entire Culture Around You Are People Who Are Just Like You, Because That's What's Comforting.

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

It's So Quiet This High Up, The Feeling You Get Is That You're One Of Those Space Monkeys. You Do The Little Job You're Trained To Do. Pull A Lever. Push A Button. You Don't Understand Any Of It, And Then You Just Die.

You'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.

I Haven't Shoplifted Since I Was 13.

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

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

Procrastination

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

What You See At Fight Club Is A Generation Of Men Raised By Women.

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

All You Can Do Is Hope For A Pattern To Emerge, And Sometimes It Never Does. Still, With A Plan, You Only Get The Best You Can Imagine. I'd Always Hoped For Something Better Than That.

The Most Boring Scenes Are The Scenes Where A Character Is Alone.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

You Can Say Anything If Enough People Will Listen.

Invisible Monsters

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.

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

Good As It Gets

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.

After A Good-looking Boy Gives You Rabies Two, Three Times, You'll Settle Down And Marry Somebody Less Exciting For The Rest Of Your Life

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

Now Is The Autumn Of Our Ennui.

Fertility Says, "can You Relax And Just Let Things Happen?" I Ask, Does She Mean, Like Disasters, Like Pain, Like Misery? Can I Just Let All That Happen? "and Joy," She Says, "and Serenity, And Happiness, And Contentment." She Says All The Wings Of The Columbia Memorial Mausoleum. "you Don't Have To Control Everything," She Says. "you Can't Control Everything." But You Can Be Ready For Disaster. A Sign Goes By Saying, Buckle Up. "if You Worry About Disaster All Of The Time, That's What You Are Going To Get," Fertility Says.

The World Of American Politics Is More Contentious Than It Has Ever Been In My Lifetime.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Give Me Romance. Flash. Give Me Denial.

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 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.

This Was Freedom. Losing All Hope Was Freedom.

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

Now This Is The First Rule Of Fight Club: There Is Nothing A Blue Collar Nobody In Oregon With A Public School Education Can Imagine That A Million-billion People Haven't Already Done.

Burn The Louvre, And Wipe Your Ass With The Mona Lisa. This Way At Least, God Would Know Our Names.

The Damaged Loves The Damaged.

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 Just Want One Person I Can Rescue And I Want One Person Who Needs Me. Who Can't Live Without Me. I Want To Be A Hero, But Not Just One Time.

You Think Maybe If You Just Work Harder And Faster, You Can Hold Off The Chaos, But Then One Day You’re Changing A Patio Light Bulb With A Five-year Life Span And You Realize How You’ll Only Be Changing This Light Maybe Ten More Times Before You’ll Be Dead.

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

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

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.

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

I Really Love Idiot, Enlightened Characters - These Characters Who Fail To Engage With The Drama Of Their Immediate Circumstances; They Fail To Be Reactive And Enrolled By Drama As It Happens Around Them.

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

Tell The World What Scares You Most. Save The World With Some Advice From The Future.

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

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

I'm Really Glad That I Made A Lot Of Mistakes, Poorly Chose My Friends Throughout My Twenties, And Didn't Have A Rocket Trajectory That Set Me On One Path Without Making Any Mistakes Or Having Any Setbacks. The Older I Get, The More I Realize That It's All Of These Failed, Horrible Things From My Past, And The Stories That They Generated, That Are The Things I Will Draw On For The Rest Of My Life.

You Are Permanent, But This Life Is Not.

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

I Want My Whole Life Lined With A Topical Anesthetic.

The World Is The Cradle And Your Trap.

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

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

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

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.

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

Things You Can Control

I Try To Forget About The Expectation That's Out There And The Audience Listening For The Next Thing So That I'm Not Trying To Please Them. I've Spent A Huge Amount Of Time Not Communicating With Those Folks And Denying That They Exist.

It's Exhausting, The Energy It Takes To Unknow A Truth.

Some Writers Research In Order To Write. I Write In Order To Research Topics That Interest Me. Especially If I Can Meet With Other People, In Forums From Illness Support Groups To Phone-sex Hotlines, And Learn What Other People Know Best.

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.

Having Nothing To Lose Is The New Wealth.

Nothing To Lose

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.

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.

At That Moment, It Seemed The Whole World Cared What Happened To Him. All Those People Were Hugging Him And Petting His Hair. Everybody Asked If He Was Okay. It Seemed That Moment Would Last Forever. That You Had To Risk Your Life To Get Love. You Had To Get Right To The Edge Of Death To Ever Be Saved.

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

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

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

First Your Parents, They Give You Your Life, But Then They Try To Give You Their Life.

People Used What They Called A Telephone Because They Hated Being Close Together And They Were Scared Of Being Alone.

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

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

You Spend Your Entire Life Becoming God And Then You Die.

Invisible Monsters

Where We're Standing Right Now, In The Ruins In The Dark, What We Build Could Be Anything.

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.

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

My Whole Life Is About Forgetting. It's My Most Valuable Job Skill.

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?

I'm In Love. So Kill Me.

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

The Lucky Ones Are Just Born Dead.

It's Only In Drugs Or Death We'll See Anything New, And Death Is Just Too Controlling.

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak.

Some Of Us Are Lucky Enough To Fall In Love Once Or Twice But The Luckiest Of Us Are Those Who Find That Someone They Simply Can't Live Without And Have The Pleasure Of Falling In Love With Them Day In And Day Out For The Rest Of Their Lives. Relationships Aren't About Simply Falling In Love Once And Being Done With It, They're About Loving Someone Until The End Of Your Days And Growing That Love Endlessly.

Falling In Love

Ultimately, Everyone Is Acting Out Of What They Feel Is The Best Choice. In A Way, They're All Trying To Improve The World. And I Think That Those Basic Choices Make The World A Better Place.

You Have To Jump Into Disaster With Both Feet.

Invisible Monsters

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

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.

I'm Not Sure What We're Running From. Nobody. Or The Future. Fate. Growing Up. Getting Old. Picking Up The Pieces. As If Running We Won't Have To Get On With Our Lives.

I Think America Is Just So In Love With Conflict.

For Sure, They Don't Teach You This In History Class, But In Colonial Times, The Person Who Got Left In The Stocks Overnight Was Nothing Less Than Fair Game For Everybody To Nail. Men Or Women, Anybody Bent Over Had No Way Of Knowing Who Was Doing The Ram Job, And This Was The Real Reason You Never Wanted To End Up Here Unless You Had A Family Member Or A Friend Who'd Stand With You The Whole Time. To Protect You. To Watch Your Ass, For Real.

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.

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.

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

Screenwriters Get Paid A Hell Of A Lot More Money But Their Level Of Frustration Seems To Be So High That I Don't Want That.

They Should Let Some People Into The Library By Prescription Only

It Can Only Take A Moment To Waste The Rest Of Your Life.

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

I 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.

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

The Cancer I Don't Have Is Everywhere Now.

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

Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill.

Some Mythological Fat Asswipe Drives Our National Economy.

National Economy

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

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

Stop Trying To Control Everything And Just Let Go! Let Go!

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.

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

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

As An Artist You Organize Your Life So That You Get A Chance To Paint, A Window Of Time, But That's No Guarantee You'll Create Anything Worth All Your Effort. You're Always Haunt By The Idea You're Wasting Your Life.

You're A Product Of Our Language, And How Our Laws Are And How We Believe Our God Wants Us. Every Bitty Molecule About You Has Already Been Thought Out By Some Million People Before You. Anything You Can Do Is Boring And Old And Perfectly Okay. You're Safe Because You're So Trapped Inside Your Culture. Anything You Can Conceive Of Is Fine Because You Can Conceive Of It. You Can't Imagine Any Way To Escape. There's No Way You Can Get Out.the World Is Your Cradle And Your Trap.

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.

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

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.

If You Don't Know What You Want, You End Up With A Lot You Don't.

As A Child Of The 1970s, I Couldn't Hold A Narrative In My Head; I Was Lucky If I Could Hold A Joke In My Head, Because Every Time You Turn On Television Or Radio, It Wipes The Slate Clean - At Least In My Case. After I Gave Up Television, I Found I Could Carry Longer And Longer Stories Or Ideas In My Head And Put Them Together Until I Was Carrying An Entire Short Story. That's Pretty Much When I Started Writing.

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.

When Did The Future Switch From Being A Promise To A Threat?

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Am Nothing, And Not Even That.

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

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

Only After Disaster Can We Be Resurrected. It's Only After You've Lost Everything That You're Free To Do Anything. Nothing Is Static, Everything Is Evolving, Everything Is Falling Apart.

Lost Everything

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

I'm Only Confrontational With My Friends.

Nobody's Told Me Anything To Date That I've Been Completely Reviled By.

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

Only After Disaster Can We Be Resurrected.

Fight Club Book

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

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

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.

Either A Species Learns To Control Its Own Population, Or Something Like Disease, Famine, War, Will Take Care Of The Issue.

I Want To Have Your Abortion.

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.

What We Think Of As Halloween Is Really The Product Of Media Barons, City Mayors, And Candy-makers. You Know, Before The 1920s, Halloween Was Really A Terrible, Terrible Night.

There Was No Real Sense Of Life Because She Had Nothing To Contrast It With.

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

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.

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

With Insomnia, You're Never Really Awake; But You're Never Really Asleep.

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.

Do You Remember When You Were 10 Or 11 Years Old And You Really Thought Your Folks Were The Best? They Were Completely Omniscient And You Took Their Word For Everything. And Then You Got Older And You Went Through This Hideous Age When Suddenly They Were The Devil, They Were Bullies, And They Didn't Know Anything.

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.

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.

Someone Bent On Suicide Won't Have Much Sense Of Humor Left.

In A World Where Billions Believe Their Deity Conceived A Mortal Child With A Virgin Human, It's Stunning How Little Imagination Most People Display.

Trending Author

Kenneth Grahame

C. Northcote Parkinson

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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