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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.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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My Writing Has To

Chuck Palahniuk

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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.

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

We All Have Some Proper Noun To Blame.

Without True Chaos, We Can Never Have True Peace.

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.

Today Is The Sort Of Day Where The Sun Only Comes Up To Humiliate You.

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

How I Feel Is Cheap And Used, Dirty And Humiliated. Dirty And Tricked And Thrown Away.

There Are Only Patterns, Patterns On Top Of Patterns, Patterns That Affect Other Patterns. Patterns Hidden By Patterns. Patterns Within Patterns. If You Watch Close, History Does Nothing But Repeat Itself. What We Call Chaos Is Just Patterns We Haven't Recognized. What We Call Random Is Just Patterns We Can't Decipher. What We Can't Understand We Call Nonsense. What We Can't Read We Call Gibberish. There Is No Free Will. There Are No Variables.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

A Child Who Is Disillusioned Abruptly, By His Peers Or Siblings, Being Ridiculed For His Faith And Imagination, May Choose Never To Believe In Anything- Tangible Or Intangible- Again. To Never Trust Or Wonder.

Just Each Of Us Being Me, Me, Me First. The Murderer, The Victim, The Witness Each Of Us Thinks Our Role Is The Lead. Probably That Goes For Anybody In The World.

The Only Person We'll Hate More Than Each Other Is Ourselves.

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

You Have To Jump Into Disaster With Both Feet.

Invisible Monsters

Funerals Are All Abstract Ceremony.

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

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

The World Is The Cradle And Your Trap.

Give Me Romance. Flash. Give Me Denial.

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

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

What If Reality Is Nothing But Some Disease?

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.

Who You Are Moment To Moment Is Just A Story.

Brandy Is So Attractive You Could Chop Her Head Off And Put It On Blue Velvet In The Window At Tiffany's And Somebody Would Buy It For A Million Dollars.

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.

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

I Like To Get People Moving And Jumping. I Think It's Good To Add More Emotion And Chaos.

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

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

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

You Can Make Mean Anything.

And The Seventh Rule Is If This Is Your First Night At Fight Club, You Have To Fight.

We're So Structured And Micromanaged, This Isn't A World Anymore, It's A Damn Cruise Ship.

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

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak.

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

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.

What You Write Should Entertain You And Serve You First. Don't Worry About Maintaining Anything Beyond Your Own Attention. Focus On Exorcising Your Demons In The Work. If You Can Do That, Then You'll Succeed In The World.

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

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.

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

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

They're Just Words Is All. Powerless. Vocabulary. Dialogue.

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

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

Nobody Wants To Worship You If You Have The Same Problems, The Same Bad Breath And Messy Hair And Hangnails, As A Regular Person. You Have To Be Everything Regular People Aren’t. Where They Fail, You Have To Go All The Way. Be What People Are Too Afraid To Be. Become Whom They Admire. People Shopping For A Messiah Want Quality. Nobody Is Going To Follow A Loser. When It Comes To Choosing A Savior, They Won't Settle For Just A Human Being.

What I'm Always Trying To Do With Every Book Is To Recreate The Effect Of The Stories We Heard As Children In Front Of Campfires And Fireplaces - The Ghost Stories That Engaged Us.

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

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

I Am Jack's Complete Lack Of Surprise. I Am Jack's Broken Heart.

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

No Matter How Much You Think You Love Somebody, You'll Step Back When The Pool Of Their Blood Edges Up Too Close.

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

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

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

We Are A Nation Of Physical Animals Who Have Forgotten How Much We Enjoy Being That. We Are Cushioned By This Kind Of Make-believe, Unreal World And Have No Idea What We Can Survive Because We Are Never Challenged Or Tested.

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

If I Turn Up Suicided In The Morning, It Was Murder.

I Want You To Invent It. I Want You To Have That Skill. To Create Your Own Reality. Your Own Set Of Laws. I Want To Try And Teach You That.

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.

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.

Tyler Lies Back And Asks, "if Marilyn Monroe Were Alive Right Now, What Would She Be Doing?" I Say, Goodnight. The Headliner Hangs Down In Shreds From The Ceiling And Tyler Says, "clawing At The Lid Of Her Coffin.

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

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

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

You’ve Thrown Down The Gauntlet. You’ve Brought My Wrath Down Upon Your House. Now, To Prove That I Exist I Must Kill You. As The Child Outlives The Father, So Must The Character Bury The Author. If You Are, In Fact, My Continuing Author, Then Killing You Will End My Existence As Well. Small Loss. Such A Life, As Your Puppet, Is Not Worth Living. But… If I Destroy You And Your Dreck Script, And I Still Exist… Then My Existence Will Be Glorious, For I Will Become My Own Master.

Daytime Television, You Can Tell Who’s Watching By The Three Kinds Of Commercials. Either It’s Clinics For Drying Out Drunks. Or It’s Law Firms Who Want To Settle Injury Suits. Or It’s Schools Offering Mail-order Vocational Degrees To Make You A Bookkeeper. A Private Detective. Or A Locksmith. If You’re Watching Daytime Television, This Is Your New Demographic. You’re A Drunk. Or A Cripple. Or An Idiot.

Trust Me, The Being-dead Part Is Much Easier Than The Dying Part. If You Can Watch Much Television, Then Being Dead Will Be A Cinch. Actually, Watching Television And Surfing The Internet Are Really Excellent Practice For Being Dead.

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

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.

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

I Still Love Him So Much I'll Hide Any Amount Of Conjugated Estrogen In His Food. So Much I'll Do Anything To Destroy Him.

I Still Love Him

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

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

This Is Our World Now, And Those Ancient People Are Dead.

For Six Months I Couldn't Sleep. With Insomnia, Nothing's Real. Everything Is Far Away. Everything Is A Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy.

I Don't Want To Die Without A Few Scars.

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.

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

For The Most Part My Friends Can Always Be More Entertaining Than The Tube Ever Can Be.

To See How Boring You Really Are, Write A Book About Soap And Cults, And The Profits You Make Will Be Your Only Means Of Subsistence.

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

This Would Be...a Book That Would Be A Trapdoor Down Into Some Place Dark. A Place Only You Could Go, Alone, When You Opened The Cover. Because Only Books Have That Power.

I Have To Have Everything In My Life Completely Fixed And Perfect And Cleaned Up And I Have To Be Complete With Everyone In My Life And I Have Seven Days In Which To Do That. So I Might Make It To Day Three Or Four, But I've Never Made It All The Way To Day Seven.

Since We Do Operate In A Binary World, If There's Something That Cannot Be This Or That, It Drives Us Crazy.

When You Reach The End Of Your Life - Trust Me, You Won't Look Back And Savor The Moments You Spent Alone.

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

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

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.

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

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

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.

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.

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

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

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.

This Wasn't Any Mere Song And Dance; Here Was A Bold, Blaring Declaration Howling Itself Into The Empty Face Of Death.

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

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

Falling In Love

The Only Thing I Shy Away From Is Non-consensual Violence. I Can't Write A Story Where Someone Is A Simple Victim Because It's Boring.

For The First Time In Longer Than I Can Remember, I Feel Peaceful. Not Happy. Not Sad. Not Anxious. Not Horny. Just All The Higher Parts Of My Brain Closing Up Shop. The Cerebral Cortex. The Cerebellum. That's Where My Problem Is. I'm Now Simplifying Myself. Somewhere Balanced In The Perfect Middle Between Happiness And Sadness. Because Sponges Never Have A Bad Day.

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

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

You're Not Getting This Back You Know. Consider It An Asshole Tax.

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

I Was Tired And Crazy And Rushed, And Every Time I Boarded A Plane, I Wanted The Plane To Crash. I Envied People Dying Of Cancer. I Hated My Life. I Was Tired And Bored With My Job And My Furniture, And I Couldn’t See Any Way To Change Things. Only End Them.

Skin, Bones, Blood And Organs Transplant From Person To Person. Even What’s Inside You Already, The Colonies Of Microbes And Bugs That Eat Your Food For You, Without Them You’d Die. Nothing Of You Is All-the-way Yours. All Of You Is Inherited. Whatever You’re Thinking, A Million Other Folks Are Thinking. Whatever You Do, They’re Doing, And None Of You Is Responsible. All Of You Is A Cooperative Effort.

Maybe This Is Why So Many Serial Killers Work In Pairs. It's Nice Not To Feel Alone In A World Full Of Victims Or Enemies. It's No Wonder Waltraud Wagner, The Austrian Angel Of Death, Convinced Her Friends To Kill With Her. It Just Seems Natural. You And Me Against The World.

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

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

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.

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 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

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

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.

More And More People Are Defining Themselves Not By What They Are About, But By What They Are Against, What They Are Overcoming, The Thing That Is Wrong With Them.

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

Public Taste Changes And The Aesthetic Of A Culture Changes Over Time, So The Idea Isn't To Appeal To The Aesthetic Of The Moment And What People Will Like Right Now; The Idea Is To Somehow Keep Yourself In The Public Memory So That As Taste Evolves It Will Eventually Come To Embrace Your Thing. So, It's About Writing To Be Remembered Rather Than Writing To Be Liked.

Going To Work Just Looked Crazy. Eating Another Meal, Ever, Made About As Much Sense As Planting Tulip Bulbs In The Shadow Of A Falling Atom Bomb.

I'm Sorry If This All Seems A Little Rushed And Desperate. It Is.

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.

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

The Same As Real Life, There Is No Happily Ever After.

Love Is A Skill You Learn.

People Would Ask Me To Autograph Their Bodies And Then The Next Time I'd See Them On Tour They'd Have My Autograph Tattooed. I Decided I Wouldn't Write On People Anymore, But I'd Give Them Arms And Legs And If They Wanted Those Autographed I'd Do That.

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

You Have A Choice. Live Or Die. Every Breath Is A Choice. Every Minute Is A Choice. To Be Or Not To Be.

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

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

The Voice Says, Maybe You Don't Go To Hell For The Things You Do. Maybe You Go To Hell For The Things You Don't Do. The Things You Don't Finish.

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

Your Heart Is My Piñata.

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

Invisible Monsters

May I Never Be Complete. May I Never Be Content. May I Never Be Perfect.

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

Some People Are Just Born Human, The Rest Of Us, We Take A Lifetime To Get There.

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

When A Regular Person Gets Sick, They Take An Aspirin. When A Writer Gets Sick, They Take Notes.

I Disconnect The Telephone To Keep The Outside World In It's Correct Place.

To Merely Observe Your Culture Without Contributing To It Seems Very Close To Existing As A Ghost.

No Matter How Much I Try And Hide This, Bit By Bit, I Start To Fall Apart.

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.

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

Jump Way Back To One Time, Evie And Me Did This Fashion Shoot In A Junk Yard, In A Slaughterhouse, In A Mortuary. We'd Go Anywhere To Look Good By Comparison, And What I Realize Is Mostly What I Hate About Evie Is The Fact That She's So Vain And Stupid And Needy. But What I Hate Most Is How She's Just Like Me. What I Really Hate Is Me So I Hate Pretty Much Everybody.

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

Fathers. Mothers. With All Their Caring And Attention. They Will Fuck You Up, Every Time.

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.

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

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

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

Anything Pretty,' Claire Will Tell You, 'it's Only For Sale Because No One Wants It.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Besides, Hysteria Is Only Possible With An Audience.

We All Have This Moment, When Your Folks First See You As Someone Not Growing Up To Be Them.

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.

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

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.

We're The Culture That Cried Wolf.

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

What I Did Was Pour Out About A Gallon Of Chanel Number Five And Put A Burning Wedding Invitation To It, And Boom, I'm Recycling.

I Know This Because Tyler Knows This.

Fight Club Novel

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.

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.

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.

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

Every Stage Of Life Has Its Own Form Of Power, And We're Always Sort Of Terrified As To Whether We Can Make The Jump To The Next Form Of Power.

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

The Girl Traced The Outline Of Her Lover's Shadow So She Would Always Have A Record Of How He Looked.

For Years Now, I've Wanted To Fall Asleep. The Sort Of Slipping Off, The Giving Up, The Falling Part Of Sleep. Now Sleeping Is The Last Thing I Want To Do.

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

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

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

You Have A Choice. Live Or Die. Every Breath Is A Choice. Every Minute Is A Choice. Every Time You Don't Throw Yourself Down The Stairs, That's A Choice. Every Time You Don't Crash Your Car, You Re-enlist.

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

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.

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

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

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

So This Is Why I Write. Because Most Times, Your Life Isn’t Funny The First Time Through. Most Times, You Can Hardly Stand It. That’s Why I Write, Because Life Never Works Except In Retrospect. And Writing Makes You Look Back. Because Since You Can’t Control Life, At Least You Can Control Your Version.

Some People Still Think Knowledge Is Power.

Knowledge Is Power

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

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

I Hate How I Don't Feel Real Enough Unless People Are Watching.

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

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

These Flowers Will Be Rotten In A Couple Hours. Birds Will Crap On Them. The Smoke Here Will Make Them Stink, And Tomorrow A Bulldozer Will Probably Run Over Them, But For Right Now They Are So Beautiful.

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

The Truth Is You Can Be Orphaned Again And Again And Again. The Truth Is, You Will Be. And The Secret Is, This Will Hurt Less And Less Each Time Until You Can't Feel A Thing. Trust Me On This.

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.

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Michael Nesmith

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