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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.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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So Often With Beginning

Chuck Palahniuk

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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.

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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're A Product Just As Much. A Product Of A Product. The People Who Design Cars, They're Products, Your Teachers, Products. The Minister In Your Church, Another Product.

As A Culture, We Believe That If We Kill Something, We've Killed The Issue. That's Why So Many Books End With Death, Why So Many Plays End With Death, Because It's Full Resolution. I'm Always Curious To Know What Happens After Romeo And Juliet Die. In A Way, That's The Beginning Of The Story. Maybe Beyond The Story Is Even Better.

When Someone Walks In And You Say "a Six-foot-tall Man," You Miss The Opportunity To Describe What A Six-foot-tall Man Would Look Like To Your Narrator, Because How The Narrator Describes A Six-foot-tall Man Says More About The Narrator Than About The Man.

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

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

I Am An Invisible Monster, And I Am Incapable Of Loving Anybody. You Don't Know Which Is Worse.

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.

I Am Nothing, And Not Even That.

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

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You Buy Furniture. You Tell Yourself, This Is The Last Sofa I Will Ever Need In My Life. Buy The Sofa, Then For A Couple Years You're Satisfied That No Matter What Goes Wrong, At Least You've Got Your Sofa Issue Handled. Then The Right Set Of Dishes. Then The Perfect Bed. The Drapes. The Rug. Then You're Trapped In Your Lovely Nest, And The Things You Used To Own, Now They Own You.

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

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

Every Time I Write Something, I Think, This Is The Most Offensive Thing I Will Ever Write. But No. I Always Surprise Myself.

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.

You Can Make Mean Anything.

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

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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.

Without True Chaos, We Can Never Have True Peace.

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

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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.

Also Consider That Someday, When You’re Dead And Rotted, Kids With Their Baby Teeth Will Sit In Their Time-geography Class And Laugh About How Stupid You Were.

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I Don't Know The Difference Between What I Want And What I'm Trained To Want.

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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.

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

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

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

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

You Couldn't Have Small, Dying Children In A Movie Without Really Bringing Everyone Down, But You Can In Comics.

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?

Are These Things Really Better Than The Things I Already Have? Or Am I Just Trained To Be Dissatisfied With What I Have Now?

What I Want Is To Be Needed. What I Need Is To Be Indispensable To Somebody. Who I Need Is Somebody That Will Eat Up All My Free Time, My Ego, My Attention. Somebody Addicted To Me. A Mutual Addiction.

I Have A Lot Of Money.

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

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Now Is The Autumn Of Our Ennui.

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I Know That When A Supersexy Older Girl With Hips And Breasts And Nice Hair Wants To Take Off Your Glasses And To Paint You A Smoky Eye She's Merely Trying To Enroll You In A Beauty Contest She's Already Won. It's A Kind Of Slummy, Condescending Gesture, Like When Rich People Ask Poor People Where They Summer. To Me, This Smacks Of A Blatant, Insensitive "let Them Eat Cake" Type Of Chauvinism.

Don't Do This. I Love You. Don't Shut Me Out.

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You Can Say Anything If Enough People Will Listen.

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

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

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

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

This Is How It Is With Insomnia. Everything Is So Far Away, A Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy. The Insomnia Distance Of Everything, You Can't Touch Anything And Nothing Can Touch You.

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

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

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

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Every High School Has Its Romeo And Juliet, One Tragic Couple. So Does Every Generation.

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.

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

We Opened Our Hearts. Hear Me, Heal Me, Save Me, Believe Me.

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

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

Tyler Gets Me A Job As A Waiter, After That Tyler's Pushing A Gun In My Mouth And Saying, The First Step To Eternal Life Is You Have To Die.

People Didn't Know Who I Was Or Why I Was There, So They Started Inventing Stories About Me. I Was A Registered Sex Offender And I'd Just Been Released From Prison And Was Being Forced To Do Community-service Work. I Was A Murderer, An Arsonist - All These Horrific Things Had Been Projected On Me Because No One Knew What To Make Of This White Guy Who Showed Up And Made Toast At 5 O'clock Every Morning.

Love Is Bullshit. Emotion Is Bullshit.

We Want You, Not Your Money. As Long As You're At Fight Club, You're Not How Much Money You've Got In The Bank. You're Not Your Job. You're Not Your Family, And You're Not Who You Tell Yourself. You're Not Your Name. You're Not Your Problems. You're Not Your Age. You Are Not Your Hopes. You Will Not Be Saved. We Are All Going To Die, Someday.

I Say Let Me Never Be Complete, I Say May I Never Be Content,i Say Deliver Me From Swedish Furniture, I Say Deliver Me From Clever Arts, I Say Deliver Me From Clear Skin And Perfect Teeth,i Say You Have To Give Up! I Say Evolve, And Let The Chips Fall Where They May!

Some Mythological Fat Asswipe Drives Our National Economy.

National Economy

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

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

Reality Means You Live Until You Die. The Real Truth Is Nobody Wants Reality.

Find Good In What The World Says Is Evil.

Invisible Monsters

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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...

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

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

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

In The Big Factory Of Perfecting Human Souls, The Earth Was Kind Of Tumbler. The Sale As The Kind People Use To Polish Rocks. All Souls Come Here To Rub The Sharp Edges Off Each Other. This Isn't Suffering. It's Erosion.

As The Stupidest Person In The Room, I Always Had The Most To Gain.

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.

I Believe In Something. But I Don't Believe That Anything Can Hold A Grudge For Long Enough To Condemn Its Creation To Eternal Punishment. Nobody Can Hold A Grudge That Long, Even God.

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

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

Worst Nightmares

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

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

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.

Give Me Romance. Flash. Give Me Denial.

You're Doomed At Being You.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Just Keep Asking Yourself: What Would Jesus Not Do?

You Don't Have Ideas When You're Sitting In That Sort Of Sterile Little Place, And You're Not Around People. The Most Boring Scenes Are The Scenes Where A Character Is Alone. I Just Need That Dynamic Of Other People Around Me To Get My Work Done.

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

Did You Ever Think About Life As A Metaphor For Television?

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

Some People Still Think Knowledge Is Power.

Knowledge Is Power

How Much Can You Know About Yourself If You've Never Been In A Fight?

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.

Demon Or Angel Or Evil Spirit, I Just Need Something To Show Itself. Ghoulie Or Ghosty Or Long-legged Beastie, I Just Want My Hand Held.

It's Easy To Attack And Destroy An Act Of Creation. It's A Lot More Difficult To Perform One.

All Human Beings Search For Either Reasons To Be Good, Or Excuses To Be Bad.

You Can Tell A More Over-the-top Incredible Story If You Use A Nonfiction Form.

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

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Herbert Kaufman

Jean-Paul Sartre

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