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

-Chuck Palahniuk

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This Is Why I

Chuck Palahniuk

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

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Sorry, Mom. Sorry, God.

It's So Hard To Forget Pain, But It's Even Harder To Remember Sweetness. We Have No Scar To Show For Happiness. We Learn So Little From Peace.

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

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

It’s Weird To Think The Place Where We’re Standing Will Only Be A Point In The Sky.

Men Are Destroyed For Being Rebellious, And Women Destroy Themselves By Failing To Be Rebellious. Unless You Can Make That Next Jump To Either Getting Along With People Or Resisting People, You Are Ultimately Destroying Yourself.

And It [fight Club Novel] Was Written So General That My Father Thought I Was Writing About His Father, And My Boss Thought I Was Writing About His Boss. People Really Put Themselves, You Know, In The Shoes Of The Narrator.

The Big Reason Why Folks Leave A Small Town,' Rant Used To Say, 'is So They Can Moon Over The Idea Of Going Back. And The Reason They Stay Put Is So They Can Moon About Getting Out.' Rant Meant That No One Is Happy, Anywhere.

Why Do I Do Anything?' She Says. 'i'm Educated Enough To Talk Myself Out Of Any Plan. To Deconstruct Any Fantasy. Explain Away Any Goal. I'm So Smart I Can Negate Any Dream.

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

Sundays Tend To Be A Day Where Just I Do Nothing But Visit People. It's Kind Of Like Trick-or-treating.

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

Language, She Said, Was Just Our Way To Explain Away The Wonder And Glory Of The World. To Deconstruct. To Dismiss. She Said People Can't Deal With How Beautiful The World Really Is. How It Can't Be Explained And Understood.

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

Does It Hurt Very Much To Die? Well, Sweetheart, Yes, But It Hurts A Lot More To Keep Living.

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.

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

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.

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.

After Long Enough, Everyone In The World Will Be You Enemy.

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.

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

The Only Difference Between Suicide And Martyrdom Is Press Coverage.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

You See, Life Only Turns Out Good Or Bad For Only A Little Bit. And Then It Turns Out Some Other Way.

How Can You Possibly Believe He Really Loves You?” Miss Sneezy Looks From The Mother To The Saint To Mr. Whittier’s Hand.“you Have No Choice,” Mr. Whittier Tells Her. “if You Need To Be Loved.

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

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

"getting Fired," Tyler Says, "is The Best Thing That Could Happen To Any Of Us. That Way, We’d Quit Treading Water And Do Something With Our Lives."

You Don’t Care Where I Live Or How I Feel, Or What I Eat Or How I Feed My Kids Or How I Pay The Doctor If I Get Sick, And Yes I Am Stupid And Bored And Weak, But I Am Still Your Responsibility.

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

For Sure, They Don't Teach You This In History Class, But In Colonial Times, The Person Who Got Left In The Stocks Overnight Was Nothing Less Than Fair Game For Everybody To Nail. Men Or Women, Anybody Bent Over Had No Way Of Knowing Who Was Doing The Ram Job, And This Was The Real Reason You Never Wanted To End Up Here Unless You Had A Family Member Or A Friend Who'd Stand With You The Whole Time. To Protect You. To Watch Your Ass, For Real.

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

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

What Would Tyler Durden Do?

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.

Portland In Particular Is A Cheap Enough Place To Live That You Can Still Develop Your Passion - Painting, Writing, Music. People Seem Less Status-conscious. Even Wealthy People Buy Second-hand Clothes And Look A Little Bit Homeless.

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

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

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

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

Some Mythological Fat Asswipe Drives Our National Economy.

National Economy

Where Would Jesus Be If No One Had Written The Gospels?

Fight Club Novel

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

We're All Trapped. It's Always 1734. All Of Us, We're Stuck In The Same Time Capsule, The Same As Those Television Shows Where The Same People Are Marooned On The Same Desert Island For Thirty Seasons And Never Age Or Escape. They Just Wear More Makeup. In A Creepy Way, Those Shows Are Maybe Too Authentic.

The World Of American Politics Is More Contentious Than It Has Ever Been In My Lifetime.

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.

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.

That's How A Good Story Works. It Changes How You Feel. It Brings You To A Greater Appreciation, A Greater Joy, Of Your Own Existence.

Jump To The Day We'll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter. Jump To The Day Another House Will Stand Here And The People Living There Won't Know We Ever Happened.

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.

I Am A Writer And The Greatest Compliment I Can Get Is To Know That I've Contributed Language To The Culture, That I've Defined Something, Given It A Name. So I Think That Is One Of The Great Things A Writer Can Do.

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.

Everything Is Funnier In Retrospect, Funnier And Prettier And Cooler. You Can Laugh At Anything From Far Enough Away.

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.

Having Nothing To Lose Is The New Wealth.

Nothing To Lose

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.

I Would Pay Snakes To Bite Her.

You Realize That People Take Drugs Because It's The Only Real Personal Adventure Left To Them In Their Time-constrained, Law-and-order, Property-lined World. It's Only In Drugs Or Death We'll See Anything New, And Death Is Just Too Controlling.

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

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

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.

Regret, Daisy Knew, Was The Only Confirmation Of A Well-lived Life. If You Didn't Occasionally Go Too Far, You Weren't Going Anywhere.

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.

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

As A Lower-class Kid, I Was Raised To Think Success Would Be Owning Stuff. Having That Great Job, Too. Now I Find My Parents' Dream Was Wrong. You Never Really Own Anything. And You're Never Really Finished As A Person.

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...

A Little Old Lady Sitting At The Front Of The Bus Can Do Nothing To Change Civil Rights.

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

We're All Of Us Haunted And Haunting.

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.

Telling Some Stories, Miss Leroy Says, Is Committing Suicide.

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

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.

In The End, It's Never What You Worry About That Gets You.

Every Woman Is Just A Different Kind Of Problem.

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

Most Times, It's Just A Lot Easier Not To Let The World Know What's Wrong.

There Are People Out There Who Will Not Read Books, But Somehow They'll Read My Books.

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

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

Worst Nightmares

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

Because I Can't Hit Bottom, I Can't Be Saved.

We'll Never Be As Young As We Are Tonight.

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

A Hotel, He Told Me, Was A Big House Where A Lot Of People Lived And Ate And Slept, But No One Knew Each Other. He Said That Described Most Families In The Outside World.

Anymore, No One's Mind Is Their Own.

I'm Really Glad That I Made A Lot Of Mistakes, Poorly Chose My Friends Throughout My Twenties, And Didn't Have A Rocket Trajectory That Set Me On One Path Without Making Any Mistakes Or Having Any Setbacks. The Older I Get, The More I Realize That It's All Of These Failed, Horrible Things From My Past, And The Stories That They Generated, That Are The Things I Will Draw On For The Rest Of My Life.

Some Of The Best Ideas I Get Seem To Happen When I'm Doing Mindless Manual Labor Or Exercise. I'm Not Sure How That Happens, But It Leaves Me Free For Remarkable Ideas To Occur.

How Folks Lay Claim To A Loved One Is They Give You A Name Of Their Own. They Figure To Label You As Their Property.

Any 'artist' Makes A Living By Expressing What Others Can't - Because They're Unaware Of Their Feelings, They're Too Afraid To Express Those Feelings, Or They Lack The Skills To Communicate And Be Understood.

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

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

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

It's Funny How The Beauty Of Art Has So Much More To Do With The Frame Than The Artwork Itself.

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

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

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

What You Have To Understand, Is Your Father Was Your Model For God. If You're Male And You're Christian And Living In America, Your Father Is Your Model For God. And If You Never Know Your Father, If Your Father Bails Out Or Dies Or Is Never At Home, What Do You Believe About God? What You End Up Doing Is You Spend Your Life Searching For A Father And God. What You Have To Consider Is The Possibility That God Doesn't Like You. Could Be, God Hates Us. This Is Not The Worst Thing That Can Happen.

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 Was Assaulting The World By Assaulting Himself.

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

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak.

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

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

Just Let Yourself Be Broken And Humiliated. Just Your Whole Life, Keep Telling People, I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry. I'm Sorry.

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

Love Is A Skill You Learn.

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

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

If You Take My Stuff Apart, You'll Find My Choruses Of Repetitions Are Picked Up Almost Verbatim From Kurt Vonnegut, And My Distanced Fracture Quality Is All From Amy Hempel, Who's Probably My Favourite Writer.

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

We're The Culture That Cried Wolf.

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

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.

The Truth Is, Every Son Raised By A Single Mom Is Pretty Much Born Married. I Don't Know, But Until Your Mom Dies It Seems Like All The Other Women In Your Life Can Never Be More Than Just Your Mistress.

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

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

Beginning With Santa Claus As A Cognitive Exercise, A Child Is Encouraged To Share The Same Idea Of Reality As His Peers. Even If That Reality Is Patently Invented And Ludicrous, Belief Is Encouraged With Gifts That Support And Promote The Common Cultural Lies. The Greatest Consensus In Modern Society Is Our Traffic Systems. The Way A Flood Of Strangers Can Interact, Sharing A Path, Almost All Of Them Traveling Without Incident. It Only Takes One Dissenting Driver To Create Anarchy.

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

The Truth Is . . . You Think What People Want You To Think.

We'll Be Remembered More For What We Destroy Than What We Create.

Invisible Monsters

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.

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.

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

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

This Is The Biggest Mistake I Could Think Would Save Me. I Wanted To Give Up The Idea That I Had Any Control. Shake Things Up. To Be Saved By Chaos. To See If I Could Cope, I Wanted To Force Myself To Grow Again. To Explode My Comfort Zone.

Deliver Me From Swedish Furniture. Deliver Me From Clever Art. And The Phone Rang And Tyler Answered. "if You Don't Know What You Want," The Doorman Said, "you End Up With A Lot You Don't." May I Never Be Complete. May I Never Be Content. May I Never Be Perfect. Deliver Me, Tyler, From Being Perfect And Complete.

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.

And If I Do Fall Asleep, Marla Has To Keep Track Of Tyler. Where He Goes. What He Does. So Maybe During The Day, I Can Rush Around And Undo The Damage.

Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill.

I Wanted To Write About The Moment When Your Addictions No Longer Hide The Truth From You. When Your Whole Life Breaks Down. That's The Moment When You Have To Somehow Choose What Your Life Is Going To Be About.

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

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.

No Matter What Happens, It’s Always Now.

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

If Death Meant Just Leaving The Stage Long Enough To Change Costume And Come Back As A New Character, Would You Slow Down? Or Speed Up?

I Used To Work In A Funeral Home To Feel Good About Myself, Just The Fact That I Was Breathing.

Alternating The Thoughtful Task Of Writing With The Mindless Work Of Laundry Or Dish Washing Will Give You The Breaks You Need For New Ideas And Insights To Occur. If You Don't Know What Comes Next In The Story... Clean Your Toilet. Change The Bed Sheets. For Christ Sakes, Dust The Computer. A Better Idea Will Come.

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.

You Always Kill The One You Love.

Just Let Your Hand Drop; And Let Fate Decide For You.

Hello! Look At Me. Hello! I Am So Zen. This Is Blood. This Is Nothing. Hello. Everything Is Nothing, And It's So Cool To Be Enlightened. Like Me.

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.

The More Things You Own, The More They Own You.

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.

This Is The Greatest Momemt Of Your Life And Your Out Missing It

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.

The Religious School She Went To, Growing Up, Ms. Wright Said How All The Girls Had To Wear A Scarf Tied To Cover Their Ears At All Times. Based On The Biblical Idea That The Virgin Mary Became Pregnant When The Holy Spirit Whispered In Her Ear. The Idea That Ears Were Vaginas. That, Hearing Just One Wrong Idea, You Lost Your Innocence. One Detail Too Many And You’d Be Ruined. Overdosed On Information.

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

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

Get Through The Moment. Avoid Confrontation. Run Away. That's Pretty Much How We Get Through Our Own Lives, Watching Television. Smoking Crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting Our Own Attention. Jacking Off. Denial.

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

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.

The First Time We Meet Another Person An Insidious Little Voice In Our Heads Says, "i Might Wear Eyeglasses Or Be Chunky Around The Hips Or A Girl, But At Least I'm Not Gay Or Black Or A Jew." Meaning: I May Be Me- But At Least I Have The Good Sense Not To Be You.

It's Creepy, But Here We Are, The Pilgrims, The Crackpots Of Our Time, Trying To Establish Our Own Alternate Reality. To Build A World Out Of Rocks And Chaos. What It's Going To Be, I Don't Know. Even After All That Rushing Around, Where We've Ended Up Is The Middle Of Nowhere In The Middle Of The Night. And Maybe Knowing Isn't The Point. Where We're Standing Right Now, In The Ruins In The Dark, What We Build Could Be Anything.

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.

In The World I See You Are Stalking Elk Through The Damp Canyon Forests Around The Ruins Of Rock Feller Center. You'll Wear Leather Clothes That Will Last You The Rest Of Your Life. You'll Climb The Wrist-thick Kudzu Vines That Wrap The Sears Towers. And When You Look Down, You'll See Tiny Figures Pounding Corn, Laying Stripes Of Venison On The Empty Car Pool Lane Of Some Abandoned Superhighways.

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.

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

Listen Up. Rant Would Tell People: ‘you’re A Different Human Being To Everybody You Meet.’ Sometimes Rant Said, ‘you Only Ever Is In The Eyes Of Other Folks.’ If You Were Going To Carve A Quote On His Grave, His Favorite Saying Was: ‘the Future You Have Tomorrow Won’t Be The Same Future You Had Yesterday.

I Take Pens And I Write On The Inside Of My Arm. When I'm With People And Somebody Says A Really Fascinating Anecdote, Or Fact, Or Phrase, I'll Write It On The Inside Of My Arm. At The End Of The Day, I'll Take The Very Best Things That Are On My Arm And I'll Copy Them Into A Notebook That I Always Carry And Only When The Weather Is Absolutely Terrible Will I Really Key The Very Best Of That Notebook Into The Computer. At That Point, It's All Sort Of Censored Twice - Only The Best Things Go From The Arm To The Book And Only The Best Things Go From The Book To The Computer.

Believe In Me And Die Forever.

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

The Rules That I Adhere To Are The Rules Of Minimalism. And Those Rules Kind Of Force Writing To Be More Filmic... To Have The Immediacy And Accessibility Of Film So That The Reader Really Has To Fill In A Lot Of The Details.

I'm Never Going To Have To Work. None Of My Descendants Are Ever Going To Have To Work; This Is Going To Make Me So Much Money. It Was Such A Letdown When I Realized That Wasn't My Invention.

I Came To Party Crashing Because Accidents Happen. People You Love Will Die. Nothing You Treasure Will Last Forever. And I Need To Accept And Embrace That Fact.

Her Mom And Dad Are Both Doctors And Want Her To Follow Her Dream, Not Turn Out The Way They Have, No Matter How Much It Costs Them.

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.

Taste Is Such A Changing Thing. Every Age Our Tastes Change. But The Things That Really Last Aren't Necessarily The Best Or The Worst Or The Most Loved Things, But They're The Things That Make The Biggest Impression.

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

The Answer Is There Is No Answer.

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

I Spend Most Of My Life Just Listening To People.

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.

It Only Takes One Mistake,' The Dan Banyan Guy Says, 'and Nothing Else You Ever Do Will Matter.' With His Empty Hand, He Takes One Of My Hands. His Fingers Feel Hot, Fever-hot, And Pounding With His Heartbeats. He Turns My Hand Palm-up Saying, 'no Matter How Hard You Work Or How Smart You Become, You'll Always Be Known For That One Poor Choice.' He Sets The Blue Pill On My Palm, Saying, 'do That One Wrong Thing- And You'll Be Dead For The Rest Of Your Life.

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 Just Want One Person I Can Rescue And I Want One Person Who Needs Me. Who Can't Live Without Me. I Want To Be A Hero, But Not Just One Time.

The Money Is In Television. Books Are Not The Dominant Medium Of Our Time, So Fewer People Will Create Them. In A Sad Way, Books Have Become A Form Of "comfort Food" We Expect To Lull Us To Sleep.

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

I'm In Love. So Kill Me.

Now This Is The First Rule Of Fight Club: There Is Nothing A Blue Collar Nobody In Oregon With A Public School Education Can Imagine That A Million-billion People Haven't Already Done.

To A Certain Extent Everybody Has A Certain Sort Of Way Of Being A Persona That They Learn How To Be When They're Really Little. They Figure Out That If They're Really Funny, Or Really Pretty, Or If They Work Really, Really Hard Or Are Really Smart, Then That's What's Going To Get Them By. That Is What Is Going To Make People Like Them.

Look Up At The Stars And You're Gone.

It's So Quiet This High Up, The Feeling You Get Is That You're One Of Those Space Monkeys. You Do The Little Job You're Trained To Do. Pull A Lever. Push A Button. You Don't Understand Any Of It, And Then You Just Die.

I Want My Whole Life Lined With A Topical Anesthetic.

In A City This Size, Every Year, Hundreds Of Husbands Walk Away. Kids Leave Home. Wives Escape. People Disappear.

On The Other Side Of The Handrail, The Hallway's Gray Marble Floor Looks As If We've Climbed A Stairway Through The Clouds.

Nothing Happened, And Nothing Kept Happening.

It's Interesting Because When David Fincher Was Making "fight Club," He Said, "it's A Romance." And It Really Is. Almost Everything I Ever Write Is Just A Romance. And That Needed To Be Sort Of Pointed Up At The End Of "fight Club." The Film Has A Very Different Ending Than The Book Does.

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

One Of Those Days

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Christine Lahti

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