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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?

-Chuck Palahniuk

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Personal Identity Seems Like

Chuck Palahniuk

...

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?

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More From Chuck Palahniuk

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.

You Ever Been Trapped In A World Where You're Everyone's Worst Nightmare?

Worst Nightmares

The Only Funny Part About Colonial Dunsboro Is Maybe It's Too Authentic, But For All The Wrong Reasons. This Whole Crowd Of Losers And Nutcases Who Hide Out Here Because They Can't Make It In The Real World, In Real Jobs — Isn't This Why We Left England In The First Place? To Establish Our Own Alternate Reality. Weren't The Pilgrims Pretty Much The Crackpots Of Their Time? For Sure, Instead Of Just Wanting To Believe Something Different About God's Love, The Losers I Work With Want To Find Salvation Through Compulsive Behaviors.

When Both Of You Are Beautiful, Neither Of You Is Beautiful. Together, As A Couple, You're Less Than The Sum Of Your Parts.

You Are Beautiful

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Think Of A Rock Polisher, One Of Those Drums, Goes Round And Round, Rolls Twenty-four/seven, Full Of Water And Rocks And Gravel. Grinding It All Up. Round And Round. Polishing Those Ugly Rocks Into Gemstones. That’s The Earth. Why It Goes Around. We’re The Rocks. And What Happens To Us—the Drama And Pain And Joy And War And Sickness And Victory And Abuse—why, That’s Just The Water And Sand To Erode Us. Grind Us Down. To Polish Us Up, Nice And Bright.

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

I Would Pay Snakes To Bite Her.

We All Have Some Proper Noun To Blame.

Katherine Kenton Remains Among The Generation Of Women Who Feel That The Most Sincere Form Of Flattery Is The Male Erection.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our Real Discoveries Come From Chaos, From Going To The Place That Looks Wrong And Stupid And Foolish.

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

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

Griping Isn't The Same As Creating Something. Rebelling Isn't Rebuilding. Ridiculing Isn't Replacing. We've Taken The World Apart But We Have No Idea What To Do With The Pieces.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

People Fall So In Love With Their Pain, They Can’t Leave It Behind. The Same As The Stories They Tell. We Trap Ourselves.

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

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

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.

Find Value In What We've Been Taught Is Worthless.

You Always Kill The One You Love.

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

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.

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

The Only Place Where You Can Really Surprise Or Shock The Reader, Or Make Someone Laugh, Is On The Lower Righthand Corner - The Very Last Panel - So As You Turn The Page, The Payoff Is In The Upper Lefthand Panel. To Pace Every Story So That There's A Setup And A Payoff At The Page Turn Was A Huge Challenge; It's A Part Of The Medium And You Really Have To Learn What Can Be Done In The Medium.

The Body Ages. Grows. Passes Through Near-lunatic Phases Of Reproductive Frenzy, But You Are Born And Die Essentially The Same Person. That... That Is Proof Of Your Deathless Soul.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Coping Mechanisms

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

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.

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

Crying Is Right At Hand In The Smothering Dark, Closed Inside Someone Else, When You See How Everything You Can Ever Accomplish Will End Up As Trash.

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

You Realize You Have No Control Over How You're Perceived.

Have Your Adventures, Make Your Mistakes, And Choose Your Friends Poorly -- All These Make For Great Stories.

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

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.

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

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

Fight Club Book

It Only Takes One Mistake And Nothing Else You Ever Do Will Matter. No Matter How Hard You Work Or How Smart You Become, You'll Always Be Known For That One Poor Choice.

If You Could Be Either God’s Worst Enemy Or Nothing, Which Would You Choose?

Fight Club Novel

Love And Life Belongs To Great Risk.

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

Good As It Gets

No One Wants To Admit We're Addicted To Music. That's Just Not Possible. No One's Addicted To Music And Television And Radio. We Just Need More Of It, More Channels, A Larger Screen, More Volume. We Can't Bear To Be Without It, But No, Nobody's Addicted. We Could Turn It Off Anytime We Wanted. I Fit A Window Frame Into A Brick Wall. With A Little Brush, The Size For Fingernail Polish, I Glue It. The Window Is The Size Of A Fingernail. The Glue Smells Like Hair Spray. The Smell Tastes Like Oranges And Gasoline.

The Best Way Is Not To Fight It, Just Go. Don't Be Trying All The Time To Fix Things. What You Run From Only Stays With You Longer. When You Fight Something, You Only Make It Stronger.

Having Nothing To Lose Is The New Wealth.

Nothing To Lose

People Had Been Working For So Many Years To Make The World A Safe, Organized Place. Nobody Realized How Boring It Would Become. With The Whole World Property-lined And Speed-limited And Zoned And Taxed And Regulated, With Everyone Tested And Registered And Adressed And Recorded. Nobody Had Left Much Room For Adventure, Except Maybe The Kind You Could Buy. [...] The Laws That Keep Us Safe, These Same Laws Condemn Us To Boredom.

You're Doomed At Being You.

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

Today Is Just One Of Those Days The Sun Comes Out To Really Humiliate You.

One Of Those Days

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.

"this Isn’t Really Death," Tyler Says, "we’ll Be Legend. We Won’t Grow Old." I Tongue The Barrel Into My Cheek And Say, Tyler, You’re Thinking Of Vampires.

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.

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

Biggest Mistake

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

I'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.

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

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.

Everyone's In Their Own Personal Coma.

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

The Answer Is There Is No Answer.

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

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

That's Why I Write, Because Life Never Works Except In Retrospect. You Can't Control Life, At Least You Can Control Your Version.

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

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

They Assume She Was Once Gorgeously Beautiful. Because Now She Looks So—bad.

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

Because Nothing Is As Good As You Can Imagine It. No One Is As Beautiful As She Is In Your Head. Nothing Is As Exciting As Your Fantasy.

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

The Joke Is, We All Have The Same Punchline.

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.

We've Spent So Much Time Judging What Other People Created That We've Created Very, Very Little Of Our Own.

Skinny Guys Fight Till They're Burger.

When You Go Out With A Drunk, You’ll Notice How A Drunk Fills Your Glass So He Can Empty His Own. As Long As You’re Drinking, Drinking Is Okay. Two’s Company. Drinking Is Fun. If There’s A Bottle, Even If Your Glass Isn’t Empty, A Drunk, He’ll Pour A Little In Your Glass Before He Fills His Own. This Only Looks Like Generosity.

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

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.

We're Consumers. We Are By-products Of A Lifestyle Obsession. Murder, Crime, Poverty, These Things Don't Concern Me. What Concerns Me Are Celebrity Magazines, Television With 500 Channels, Some Guy's Name On My Underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra...

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

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.

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.

That If You Could Acquire Enough, Accomplish Enough, You’d Never Want To Own Or Do Another Thing. That If You Could Eat Or Sleep Enough, You’d Never Need More. That If Enough People Loved You, You’d Stop Needing Love.

A Writer’s Job Is To Cultivate What Can Go Wrong.

It's All Mirror, Mirror On The Wall Because Beauty Is Power The Same Way Money Is Power The Same Way A Gun Is Power.

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

Falling In Love

The Cancer I Don't Have Is Everywhere Now.

Ideas Come At Any Moment -- Except When You Demand Them. Most Ideas Come While I'm Physically Active, At The Gym, With Friends, Gardening, So I Always Carry Pen And Paper. My First Draft Is Always Written In Longhand. But Once The First Dozen Chapters, More Like Short Stories, Are Written, Then Momentum Builds Until I Can't Leave The Project Until It's Done.

Our Purest Form Of Joy Comes When People We Envy Get Hurt. That Most Genuine Form Of Joy.

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

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.

My Books Are Always About Someone Obtaining A Power To Replace The Previous Sort Of Power That They Held.

You Realize That Our Mistrust Of The Future Makes It Hard To Give Up The Past.

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

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

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

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.

Years Of Living In The Hope That What You'll Get Will Be Better Than What You Have. Years Of Looking And Feeling Worse In The Hope That You Might Look Better.

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

I Have A Lot Of Money.

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.

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.

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

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

And It's Funny How When Somebody Saves You, The First Thing You Want To Do Is Save Other People. All Other People. Everybody. The Kid Never Knew The Man's Name. But He Never Forgot That Smile. "hero" Isn't The First Word, But It's The First Word That Comes To Mind.

If You Don’t Claim Your Humanity, You Will Become A Statistic.

Quitting Your Job

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

Life's Greatest Comfort Is Being Able To Look Over Your Shoulder And See People Worse Off, Waiting In Line Behind You.

Waiting In Line

He Was The Kind Of Boy Any Young Girl Should Date While She's Still Able To Recover.

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

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.

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

I Am Jack's Smirking Revenge.

Your Being Born Makes Your Parents God. You Owe Them Your Life, And They Can Control You. Then Puberty Makes You Satan, Just Because You Want Something Better.

Invisible Monsters

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

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

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

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.

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

Invisible Monsters

What If Reality Is Nothing But Some Disease?

More And More We Are Taught Something Throughout Our Growing Up, Our Education, And Continuously, No Matter How Much We Believe In This Thing, Something Comes Up That Forces Us To Revise Our Entire Belief System. No Matter Whom You Idolize, It Turns Out That Louis Armstrong Collected Vast Amounts Of Pornography.

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

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.

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

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

My Life Has Been About Living Like A Monk And Looking Like A Priest So That People Will Come Up To Me And Tell Me Their Most Appalling Stories. They Have To Make Their Confession To Somebody, And It Might As Well Be Me.

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?

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

I Didn't Use Anybody's Story. I Used The Context And The Structure Of The Situation. People Were So, So Desperate To Tell Their Story And Begin To Digest Their Experience - Like Turning It Into A Story - That After The Fist Few Weeks I Could Go With A Pad And Pencil And Take Notes. People Didn't Seem At All Bothered By That.

It's Not Love Or Anything, But I Think I Like You, Too.

You Know How They Say You Only Hurt The Ones You Love? Well, It Works Both Ways.

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

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.

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.

Look Up At The Stars And You're Gone.

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

Everything Is Still Falling Apart.

The Strength Of Film Is Its Accessibility And Immediacy. But The Strength Of Books Is That Freedom To Really Depict Anything You Want Because People Are Going To Be Reading It In Private. So, I'm Always Trying To Write With The Immediacy And The Constant Motion Of Film But I'm Also Trying To Write With The Complete Freedom Of Subject Matter That Books Have.

You 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.

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

Rant Said That View Of Time Was Set Up So Folks Won't Live Forever. It's The Planned Obsolescence We've All Agreed To...'nothing Says You Have To Swallow This,' Rant Told Me. 'you Can Always Just Die.

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

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

Fight Club Book

Inspiration Needs Disease, Injury, Madness.

Love Is Bullshit. Emotion Is Bullshit. I Am A Rock. A Jerk. I'm An Uncaring Asshole And Proud Of It.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Books Can Create A Depth Of Story, A Background Of Information And Ideas, That Televison And Movies Can't. Sure, The Television Shows May Shock, But Only On A Superficial Level. They'd Never Risk Market Share To Really Explore The Issues. They Report, But Don't Analyze Or Suggest Any New Ways For Living Our Lives.

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

Things You Can Control

I Write Compulsively. I've Got So Many Ideas, And I Love To Do It So Much, I Can't Not Do It. I Write The Way Some People Do Drugs.

Real Smarts Begin When You Quit Quoting Other People.

Most People Would Never Admit It, But They'd Been Bitching Since They Were Born. As Soon As Their Head Popped Out Into That Bright Delivery-room Light, Nothing Had Been Right. Nothing Had Been As Comfortable Or Felt So Good. Just The Effort It Took To Keep Your Stupid Physical Body Alive, Just Finding Food And Cooking It And Dishwashing, The Keeping Warm And Bathing And Sleeping, The Walking And Bowel Movements And Ingrown Hairs, It Was All Getting To Be Too Much Work.

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

What Do You Do When Your Entire Identity Is Destroyed In An Instant? How Do You Cope When Your Whole Life Story Turns Out To Bw Wrong?

Her Voice Makes Me Think Of Her Mouth Makes Me Think Of Her Breath Makes Me Think Of Her Breasts.

But If You Tell Folks You're A College Student, Folks Are So Impressed. You Can Be A Student In Anything And Not Have To Know Anything. Just Say Toxicology Or Marine Biokinesis, And The Person You're Talking To Will Change The Subject To Himself. If This Doesn't Work, Mention The Neural Synapses Of Embryonic Pigeons.

Everybody's Still Miserable In The Same Way They've Always Been Miserable, And More And More Of My Friends - Especially My Male Friends - Find Themselves Taking Anti-anxiety, Psychotropic Drugs. It Seems Like Everybody I Know Is Wondering If They're Really Who They Are, Or Once The Prescription Runs Out, Will They Become Someone Different?

Everybody's Trying To Make Every Minute Of The Present Last Forever. Preserve Every Second.

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

Part Of Her Doing Suicide Intervention Is My Caseworker Has To Mix Me Another Gin And Tonic.

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

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.

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

History Is Nothing Except Monsters Or Victims. Or Witnesses.

We're All Of Us Haunted And Haunting.

Everyone Smiles With That Invisible Gun To Their Head.

All Object Printed: Love Me. Look Me. Million Speaking Objects,begging. Crown American Consumer With Power Of King, To Rescue Choose And Give Home Or Abandon Here For Expire.

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

I Always Thought I'd Write When I Retired - When I Turned 65. But By The Time I Was 33, To Tell You The Truth, I Was A Little Bored With Drugs And Sex, And I Thought I'd Do The Writing Thing.

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.

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

When You Understand, That What You're Telling Is Just A Story. It Isn't Happening Anymore. When You Realize The Story You're Telling Is Just Words, When You Can Just Crumble Up And Throw Your Past In The Trashcan, Then We'll Figure Out Who You're Going To Be.

Invisible Monsters

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.

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.

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

Some Mythological Fat Asswipe Drives Our National Economy.

National Economy

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Tammy Faye Bakker

Virginia C. Andrews

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