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

-Chuck Palahniuk

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If A Tree Falls

Chuck Palahniuk

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

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His Computer Password Is "password.

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

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.

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

The Unreal Is More Powerful Than The Real. Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You Can Imagine It. Because It's Only Intangibles, Ideas, Concepts, Beliefs, Fantasies That Last. Stone Crumbles. Wood Rots. People, Well, They Die.

This Isn't About Love As In Caring. This Is About Property As In Ownership.

Property Ownership

Love Is Bullshit. Emotion Is Bullshit.

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

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.

I Know This Because Tyler Knows This.

Fight Club Novel

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Everyone Holds A Certain Type Of Power. For Young People, It's Their Youth, Their Attractiveness, And Their Energy. But They're Terrified That As Those Qualities Fade, What Are They Going To Replace That Form Of Power With?

Beginning With Santa In Infancy, And Ending With The Tooth Fairy As The Child Acquires Adult Teeth. Or, Plainly Put, Beginning With All The Possibility Of Childhood, And Ending With An Absolute Trust In The National Currency.

Shotgunning Anybody In This Room Would Be The Moral Equivalent Of Killing A Car, A Barbie Doll, A Vacuum Cleaner. We're All Such Products.

Parents Are Like God Because You Wanna Know They're Out There, And You Want Them To Think Well Of You, But You Really Only Call When You Need Something.

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

Everyone Is Equal

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

Help Me Give Up My Addiction To Hope.

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

What People Forget Is A Journey To Nowhere Starts With A Single Step, Too.

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

Forget The Past

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.'

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

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

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

Imagine A Plague You Catch Through Your Ears.

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.

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

Because After You've Crossed Some Lines, You Just Keep Crossing Them. And There's No Escaping From Constant Escape. Distracting Ourselves. Avoiding Confrontation. Getting Past The Moment. Jacking Off. Television. Denial.

Being Tired Isn't The Same As Being Rich, But Most Times It's Close Enough.

I Haven't Shoplifted Since I Was 13.

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

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.

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.

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

Or Maybe...just Maybe This Whole Process Is Our Training Wheels Towards Something Bigger. If We Can Reflect And Know Our Lives, We Might Stay Awake And Shape Our Futures.

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

Picture Anybody Growing Up So Stupid He Didn't Know That Hope Is Just Another Phase You'll Grow Out Of.

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

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

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

The Best Way To Waste Your Life, Is By Taking Notes. The Easiest Way To Avoid Living Is To Just Watch. Look For The Details. Report. Don't Participate.

My Books Are More About People Experimenting With Different Identities And Social Models In A Short-term Way Before They Can Break Through To Something Authentic.

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 Whole World Is A Disaster Waiting To Happen.

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

Art Never Comes From Happiness.

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

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

There's No Way You Can Get The Past Right. You Can Pretend. You Can Delude Yourself, But You Can't Re-create What's Over.

You Have To Give Up! You Have To Give Up! You Have To Realize That Someday You Will Die, Until You Know That, You Are Useless!

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

Worker Bees Can Leave. Even Drones Can Fly Away. The Queen Is Their Slave.

I Think We're In An Age Starved For Genuine Experiences, Instead Of Cathartic Phony Experiences Through The Media, Structured, Engineered Experiences. And Those Are The Fast Food, The Masturbation Of Experience. They Don't Really Exhaust Any Aspect Of Ourselves; They Don't Make Us Any Stronger.

No Matter How Careful You Are, There's Going To Be The Sense You Missed Something, The Collapsed Feeling Under Your Skin That You Didn't Experience It All. There's That Fallen Heart Feeling That You Rushed Right Through The Moments Where You Should've Been Paying Attention. Well, Get Used To That Feeling. That's How Your Whole Life Will Feel Some Day.

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

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.

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

Actually, Watching Television And Surfing The Internet Are Really Excellent Practice For Being Dead.

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.

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.

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

Real Writers Write Because They Love To Write. They Don't Write For Public Acclaim.

Make Me Into Anything, But Just Love Me.

Invisible Monsters

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

I Suppose It’s Comfort, Perhaps A Sense Of Self-control, Doing Worse Things To Yourself Than The World Will Ever Dare Inflict.

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

Some Stories, She’d Say, The More You Tell Them, The Faster You Use Them Up. Those Kind, The Drama Burns Off, And Every Version, They Sound More Silly And Flat. The Other Kind Of Story, It Uses You Up. The More You Tell It, The Stronger It Gets. Those Kind Of Stories Only Remind You How Stupid You Were. Are. Will Always Be.

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

The First Step - Especially For Young People With Energy And Drive And Talent, But Not Money - The First Step To Controlling Your World Is To Control Your Culture. To Model And Demonstrate The Kind Of World You Demand To Live In. To Write The Books. Make The Music. Shoot The Films. Paint The Art.

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.

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.

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

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

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

If You Make People Laugh Too Much, Their Blood Becomes - I Believe It Is Acidic As Opposed To Alkaline. It Changes The Oxygen Level In The Blood, And People Are Likelier To Pass Out At That Point.

Having Nothing To Lose Is The New Wealth.

Nothing To Lose

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.

The Truth Is, Wherever You Choose To Be, It's The Wrong Place.

I Love Everything About Tyler Durden, His Courage And His Smarts. His Nerve. Tyler Is Funny And Charming And Forceful And Independent, And Men Look Up To Him And Expect Him To Change Their World. Tyler Is Capable And Free, And I Am Not.

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

A Certain Number Of People Have To Live Their Lives Outdoors Between 8 A.m. And 8 P.m., And A Certain Number Of People Can Only Leave Their Homes Between 8 P.m. And 8 A.m. So Basically, Public Life Has To Be Lived In These Shifts, In Order For Everyone To Fit On The Streets Because There's Just No More Room For Any More Infrastructure, Any More Highways. So It Polarizes The Community Into Day People And Night People, And It Becomes Sort Of A Metaphor For Racism And Classism.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

If You Died Right Now, How Would You Feel About Your Life?

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

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.

No Matter What Happens, It’s Always Now.

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

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

There's An Old Saying: 'no Piece Of Writing Is Ever Finished, It's Just Abandoned.' But My Own Rule Is: No Piece Of Work Is Done Until You Want To Kill Everyone Involved In The Publishing Process, Especially Yourself.

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.

The Problem With Educating Stupid People Was That They Didn’t Know They Were Stupid. The Same Went For Curing Crazy People.

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

Who You Are Moment To Moment Is Just A Story.

Don't Write About Your Most Emotionally Charged Moment As A Learning Thing.

There's No Escaping Fate, It Just Keeps Going. Day And Night, The Future Just Keeps Coming At You.

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

Your Heart Is My Piñata.

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

Personal Identity Seems Like It's Just Such An American Archetype, From Holly Golightly Re-inventing Herself In 'breakfast At Tiffany's' To Jay Gatsby In 'the Great Gatsby.' It Seems Like The Sort Of Archetypal American Issue. If You're Given The Freedom To Be Anything, Or Be Anyone, What Do You Do With It?

I'm Only Confrontational With My Friends.

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.

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak.

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

A Couple Drinks. A Couple Aspirin. Repeat.

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.

Optimism Is The First Symptom That Any Disease Is Fatal.

I Try To Tell A Story The Way Someone Would Tell You A Story In A Bar, With The Same Kind Of Timing And Pacing.

The Air Will Always Be To Filled With Something. Your Body Too Sore Or Tired. Your Father Too Drunk. Your Wife Too Cold. You Will Always Have Some Excuse Not To Live Your Life.

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

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

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

Imagine Books And Music And Movies Being Filtered And Homogenized. Certified. Approved For Consumption. People Will Be Happy To Give Up Most Of Their Culture For The Assurance That The Tiny Bit That Comes Through Is Safe And Clean. White Noise.

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

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

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

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.

He Was Assaulting The World By Assaulting Himself.

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

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

Really, Just Looking Around, You Feel A Twinge Of Pity For The Poor Souls Who Succeeded In Getting Past The Pearly Gates. One Can't Help But Picture The Lackluster Vip Lounge In Heaven, A Kind Of Nonalcoholic Ice-cream Social Starring Harriet Beecher Stowe And Mahatma Gandhi. Hardly Anyone's Idea Of A "with-it" Social Register.

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

I Think It's Just A Matter Of Time Before Everybody Realizes That I'm Kind Of A Romance Novelist ... That These Are All Stories About People Kind Of Falling Back In Love Or Struggling With Relationships. Even Fight Club Was Just A Big Romantic Ending.

Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill.

Anymore, No One's Mind Is Their Own.

Don't Do What You Want. Do What You Don't Want. Do What You're Trained Not To Want. Do The Things That Scare You The Most.

Invisible Monsters

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

The Police Are Asking Through The Bedroom Door, Why Did I Make A Batch Of Strawberry Daiquiris Before I Called Them? Because We Were Out Of Raspberries. Because, Can't They See, It Just Does Not Matter. Time Was Not Of The Essence.

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.

You're Doomed At Being You.

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.

Look Up At The Stars And You're Gone.

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

People Have To Deal With Their Issues Together; They Have To Expose Themselves And Kind Of Exhaust Themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Am Jack's Smirking Revenge.

Here Are The Shadows Left Behind By A Thousand Moments, A Thousand Moods, Of Needs Traced Here On The Wall By Men Who Are Gone. Here Is The Record Of Their Being Here.

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

You Are Not Special. You Are Not A Beautiful Or Unique Snowflake. You're The Same Decaying Organic Matter As Everything Else.

You Ever Wonder When God's Coming Back With A Lot Of Barbecue Sauce?

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

The Girl's Lover Was Gone, But His Shadow Was Still There.

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

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

What Kind Of Dining Set Defines Me As A Person?

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.

A Male Chauvinist Pig Isn't Born, He's Made, And More And More Of Them Are Being Made By Women.

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.

There's Always The Chance You Could Die Right In The Middle Of Your Life Story.

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

Falling In Love

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

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

Am I Sleeping? Have I Slept At All? This Is Insomnia.

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

The World Is The Cradle And Your Trap.

Hey, Even The Mona Lisa Is Falling Apart.

Believe In Me And Die Forever.

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

How Everything You Ever Love Will Reject You Or Die. Everything You Ever Create Will Be Thrown Away. Everything You're Proud Of Will End Up As Trash.

The World Will Always Punish The Few People With Special Talents The Rest Of Us Don’t Recognize As Real.

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.

Maybe The Only Thing Each Of Us Can See Is Our Own Shadow. 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. The Same Way Old Painters Would Sit In A Tiny Dark Room And Trace The Image Of What Stood Outside A Tiny Window, In The Bright Sunlight. The Camera Obscura. Not The Exact Image, But Everything Reversed Or Upside Down.

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

That’s The American Dream: To Make Your Life Into Something You Can Sell.

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

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

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

Experts In Ancient Greek Culture Say That People Back Then Didn't See Their Thoughts As Belonging To Them. When Ancient Greeks Had A Thought, It Occurred To Them As A God Or Goddess Giving An Order. Apollo Was Telling Them To Be Brave. Athena Was Telling Them To Fall In Love. Now People Hear A Commercial For Sour Cream Potato Chips And Rush Out To Buy, But Now They Call This Free Will. At Least The Ancient Greeks Were Being Honest.

Falling In Love

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.

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

Inspiration Needs Disease, Injury, Madness.

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.

Some Soap Opera, You Know, Real People Pretending To Be Fake People With Made-up Problems Being Watched By Real People To Forget Their Real Problems.

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

It Takes A Lot To Get People Talking In Airplanes. But Once They Start Talking, You Just Can't Shut Them Up.

It's The Marilyn Monroe School Of Medicine Where Enough Of Any Drug Will Cure Any Disease.

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.

You Had To Risk Your Life To Get Love. You Had To Get Right To The Edge Of Death To Ever Be Saved.

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

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

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.

This Is Why I Loved The Support Groups So Much, If People Thought You Were Dying, They Gave You Their Full Attention. If This Might Be The Last Time They Saw You, They Really Saw You. Everything Else About Their Checkbook Balance And Radio Songs And Messy Hair Went Out The Window. You Had Their Full Attention. People Listened Instead Of Just Waiting For Their Turn To Speak. And When They Spoke, They Weren't Just Telling You A Story. When The Two Of You Talked, You Were Building Something, And Afterward You Were Both Different Than Before.

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