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Peter Used To Say That An Artist’s Job Is To Make Order Out Of Chaos. You Collect Details, Look For A Pattern, And Organize. You Make Sense Out Of Senseless Facts. You Puzzle Together Bits Of Everything. You Shuffle And Reorganize. Collage. Montage. Assemble.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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Peter Used To Say

Chuck Palahniuk

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Peter Used To Say That An Artist’s Job Is To Make Order Out Of Chaos. You Collect Details, Look For A Pattern, And Organize. You Make Sense Out Of Senseless Facts. You Puzzle Together Bits Of Everything. You Shuffle And Reorganize. Collage. Montage. Assemble.

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

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

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Those Who Remember The Past Tend To Get The Story Really Screwed Up.

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

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

Everyone Smiles With That Invisible Gun To Their Head.

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

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

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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Whole World Is A Disaster Waiting To Happen.

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

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

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 Only Biodiversity We're Going To Have Left Is Coke Versus Pepsi. We're Landscaping The Whole World One Stupid Mistake At A Time.

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

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.

The Photographer In My Head Says: Give Me Peace. Flash. Give Me Release. Flash.

In A World Where Vows Are Worthless.where Making A Pledge Means Nothing. Where Promises Are Made To Be Broken, It Would Be Nice To See Words Come Back Into Power.

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

There's A Big Difference Between "not Caring" Or Being "nihilistic" About A Topic And Simply Not Being Enrolled By The Drama Presented By Other People. Just Because My Characters Choose Not To React In Standard, Socially-appropriate Ways - That Does Not Mean They Don't Care. They Just Reject Ordinary Dramas.

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.

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

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

I Write Because It's A Way Of Presenting Something Without Having To Be There.

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

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

If It Is The Case That Love Does Survive Death, Then You May Consider This To Be A Happy Ending. Boy Meets Girl. Boy Gets Girl. Happily Ever After Or Not.

What You Have To Understand, Is Your Father Was Your Model For God.

A Comedy Ends With A Wedding, And A Tragedy Ends With A Funeral: You Always Have To Juxtapose Sex And Death.

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.

I Really Believe It's The Moments We Can't Talk About That Become The Rest Of Our Lives. It's The Moments We Can't Process By Telling A Story That Destroy Us In The End.

You Always Kill The One You Love.

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.

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!

This Deluded Little Rube Who Really Thought The Future Would Be Any Better. If You Just Worked Hard Enough. If You Just Learned Enough. Ran Fast Enough. Everything Would Turn Out Right, And Your Life Would Amount To Something.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, I'll Be Anybody You Want Me To Be. Use Me. Change Me. I Can Be Thin With Big Breasts And Big Hair. Take Me Apart. Make Me Into Anything, But Just Love Me.

You're Doomed At Being You.

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

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.

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

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

Why Should I Believe Any Of This?' It Happens That Fast. I Say, Because I Think I Like You. Marla Says, 'not Love?' This Is A Cheesy Enough Moment, I Say. Don't Push It.

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

Help Me Give Up My Addiction To Hope.

Maybe We Have To Break Everything To Make Something Better Out Of Ourselves.

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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.

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

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

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.

When You're Thinking About The Rest Of Your Life, You're Never Really Thinking More Than A Couple Years Down The Road.

We Hear The Ambient Noise Of Children Singing. We Hear Lions And Tigers Roar. Hyenas Laugh. Some Jungle Bird Or Howler Monkey Declares Its Existence, Screeching A Maniac's Gibberish. Our Entire World, Always Doing Battle Against The Silence And Obscurity Of Death.

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?

You Tell Yourself That Noise Is What Defines Silence. Without Noise, Silence Would Not Be Golden. Noise Is The Exception.

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.

Who You Are Moment To Moment Is Just A Story.

I Let Go. Lost In Oblivion. Dark And Silent And Complete. I Found Freedom. Losing All Hope Was Freedom.

It's Not Enough To Be Numbered With The Grains Of Sand On The Beach And The Stars In The Sky.

Just For The Record, How I Feel Right Now Is Very Terrific.

Some Little Part Of Themselves For Someone In The Future To Discover. Maybe A Thought. We Were Here. We Built This. A Reminder.

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.

My Stories Tend To Bring People From Isolation Into Community - With At Least One Other Person, Usually With A Whole Community Of People - So That They Find Themselves Accepted Back By A World That They Kind Of Fled From.

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

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

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

Quitting Your Job

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.

I Would Say Any Behavior That Is Not The Status Quo Is Interpreted As Insanity, When, In Fact, It Might Actually Be Enlightenment. Insanity Is Sorta In The Eye Of The Beholder.

I Admire Addicts. In A World Where Everybody Is Waiting For Some Blind, Random Disaster Or Some Sudden Disease, The Addict Has The Comfort Of Knowing What Will Most Likely Wait For Him Down The Road. He's Taken Some Control Over His Ultimate Fate, And His Addiction Keeps The Cause Of His Death From Being A Total Surprise.

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.

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.

Imagine How You’d Feel If Your Whole Life Turned Into A Job You Couldn’t Stand.

Where Every Day Doesn't Start With An Alarm Clock And End With The Television.

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.

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

The Cancer I Don't Have Is Everywhere Now.

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

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.

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

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

It's Pathetic How We Can't Live With The Things We Can't Understand. How We Need Everything Labeled And Explained And Deconstructed.

If People Thought You Were Dying, They Gave You Their Full Attention.

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.

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.

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