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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...

-Chuck Palahniuk

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We're Consumers. We Are

Chuck Palahniuk

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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...

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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.

What's Burning Down Is A Re-creation Of A Period Revival House Patterned After A Copy Of A Copy Of A Copy Of A Mock Tudor Big Manor House. It's A Hundred Generations Removed From Anything Original, But The Truth Is Aren't We All?

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!

I Know So Many Writers Who Are A Hundred Times Better Than Me And Have Longer, Greater Ideas Than Mine, But They Gave Up; They Stopped. The Biggest Talent You Can Have Is Determination.

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.

Experts In Ancient Greek Culture Say That People Back Then Didn't See Their Thoughts As Belonging To Them. When Ancient Greeks Had A Thought, It Occurred To Them As A God Or Goddess Giving An Order. Apollo Was Telling Them To Be Brave. Athena Was Telling Them To Fall In Love. Now People Hear A Commercial For Sour Cream Potato Chips And Rush Out To Buy, But Now They Call This Free Will. At Least The Ancient Greeks Were Being Honest.

Falling In Love

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.

Sticks And Stones May Break Your Bones But Words Can Hurt Like Hell.

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

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

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.

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

Because After You've Crossed Some Lines, You Just Keep Crossing Them. And There's No Escaping From Constant Escape. Distracting Ourselves. Avoiding Confrontation. Getting Past The Moment. Jacking Off. Television. Denial.

Here In Your Mind You Have Complete Privacy. Here There's No Difference Between What Is And What Could Be.

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

I Need To Rebel Against Myself. It's The Opposite Of Following Your Bliss. I Need To Do What I Most Fear.

Believe In Yourself

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.

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 Realized That My Book Readings Were Boring Me. I Was Going To Go Up There And Read A Passage And Sleepwalk Through The Whole Event And I Needed To Make It More Interesting. I Wanted To Be Running And Jumping And Do Something So That The Event Would Be So Exciting. I Had To Trick Myself Into Having Fun Every Time.

In A World Where Billions Believe Their Deity Conceived A Mortal Child With A Virgin Human, It's Stunning How Little Imagination Most People Display.

To Hell With Housework, Our Top Priority Has Always Been Between Our Legs.

This Is The Upside Of Already Being Eternally Damned

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

The Joke Is, We All Have The Same Punchline.

You Have To Keep Recycling Yourself.

Most Guys Will Fight To Know You. Some Guys Will Deny You're A Real Person, And Some Will Just Ignore You." The Zealot. The Atheist. The Agnostic.

The Weather Today Is An Increasing Trend Towards Denial.

The Only Difference Between Suicide And Martyrdom Is Press Coverage.

Suicide Is Very Contagious.

Inspiration Needs Disease, Injury, Madness.

Maybe The Only Thing Each Of Us Can See Is Our Own Shadow. Carl Jung Called This His Shadow Work. He Said We Never See Others. Instead We See Only Aspects Of Ourselves That Fall Over Them. Shadows. Projections. Our Associations. The Same Way Old Painters Would Sit In A Tiny Dark Room And Trace The Image Of What Stood Outside A Tiny Window, In The Bright Sunlight. The Camera Obscura. Not The Exact Image, But Everything Reversed Or Upside Down.

In Truth, The Degree Of Anyone's Success Depends On How Often They Can Say The Word Yes And Hear The Word No.

Anybody's True Nature Is Bullshit. There Is No Human Soul. Emotion Is Bullshit. Love Is Bullshit.

You Always Kill The One You Love.

These Distraction-oholics. These Focus-ophobics.

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.

Most Of The Laugh Tracks On Television Were Recorded In The Early 1950’s. These Days, Most Of The People You Hear Laughing Are Dead.

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

Everyone Wants To Be Tested And Challenged. Everyone Would Like A Good, Honest Fight To Exhaust Their Frustrations.

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.

I Used Rebellion As A Way To Hide Out. We Use Criticism As A Fake Participation.

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.

No Matter How Much You Love Someone, You Still Want To Have You Own Way.

Some People Still Think Knowledge Is Power.

Knowledge Is Power

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.

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.

We Come From A Generation Of People Who Need Their Tv Or Stereo Playing All The Time. These People So Scared Of Silence. These Soundaholics, These Quietophobics.

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

You Only Ask People About Themselves So You Can Tell Them About Yourself.

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

Maybe It's Just A Daughter's Job To Piss Off Her Mother.

The Answer Is There Is No Answer.

Love Is Bullshit. Emotion Is Bullshit.

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

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

I Think In A Way, You're Doomed, Once You Can Envision Something. You're Sort Of Doomed To Make It Happen. I've Found That The Moment I Can Envision Leaving A Relationship, That's Usually The Moment That The Relationship Starts To Fall Apart.

My Theory Is That Church Used To Be That Place. Instead Of Being A Place Where You Went To Look Good, It Was A Place Where You Could Risk Going Every Week To Look Your Worst.

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.

You Hear The Best Stories From Ordinary People. That Sense Of Immediacy Is More Real To Me Than A Lot Of Writerly, Literary-type Crafted Stories. I Want That Immediacy When I Read A Novel.

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.

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

I'm In Love. So Kill Me.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

There Are A Lot Of Things We Don't Want To Know About The People We Love.

Your Past Is Just A Story. And Once You Realize This It Has No Power Over You.

His Saliva Tasted Like The Wet Dicks Of Ten Thousand Lonely Truck Drivers.

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.

The Liberator Who Destroys My Property Is Fighting To Save My Spirit. The Teacher Who Clears All Possessions From My Path Will Set Me Free.

Want To Talk Third-wave Feminism, You Could Cite Ariel Levy And The Idea That Women Have Internalized Male Oppression. Going To Spring Break At Fort Lauderdale, Getting Drunk, And Flashing Your Breasts Isn't An Act Of Personal Empowerment. It's You, So Fashioned And Programmed By The Construct Of Patriarchal Society That You No Longer Know What's Best For Yourself. A Damsel Too Dumb To Even Know She's In Distress.

Give Me Lust, Baby. Flash. Give Me Malice. Flash. Give Me Detached Existentialist Ennui. Flash. Give Me Rampant Intellectualism As A Coping Mechanism. Flash.

Coping Mechanisms

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.

There's Still A Thousand Places I Haven't Gone To Die.

Find Joy In Everything You Choose To Do. Every Job, Relationship, Home... It's Your Responsibility To Love It, Or Change It.

Narrator: You Had To Give It To Him: He Had A Plan. And It Started To Make Sense, In A Tyler Sort Of Way. No Fear. No Distractions. The Ability To Let That Which Does Not Matter Truly Slide.

This Is Less Teaching Than Damage Control. You May As Well Paint A House That’s On Fire.

That’s How A Scary Story Works. It Echoes Some Ancient Fear. It Re-creates Some Forgotten Terror. Something We’d Like To Think We’ve Grown Beyond. But It Can Still Scare Us To Tears. It’s Something You’d Hoped Was Healed.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

If There Had Been Zombies On The Iceberg When The Titanic Hit It, That Would Have Made A Much Better Movie.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Truth Is, Immigrants Tend To Be More American Than People Born Here.

Stop The Excessive Shopping And Masturbation. Quit Your Job. Start A Fight. Prove You're Alive. If You Don't Claim Your Humanity, You Will Become A Statistic.

The Trick To Forgetting The Big Picture Is To Look At Everything Close-up. The Shortcut To Closing A Door Is To Bury Yourself In The Details. This Is How We Must Look To God. As If Everything's Fine.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Ultimately, Everyone Is Acting Out Of What They Feel Is The Best Choice. In A Way, They're All Trying To Improve The World. And I Think That Those Basic Choices Make The World A Better Place.

I Think America Is Just So In Love With Conflict.

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

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

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.

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

No, It's Not Fair, But What Makes Earth Feel Like Hell Is Our Expectation That It Should Feel Like Heaven. Earth Is Earth. Dead Is Dead. You'll Find Out For Yourself Soon Enough. It Won't Help The Situation For You To Get All Upset.

I Think That Young People Are Less Attached To Items And Objects Now. They're Less Attached To Consuming Things And Accruing Things Because They See It As A System That Doesn't Necessarily Work And Give Them A Sense Of Adulthood And Fulfillment. They're Much More In Tune With Wanting To Achieve A Skill, A Form Of Self-expression, Or A Body Of Knowledge That Fulfills The Same Function, Fulfills Their Adulthood.

I Want Out Of The Labels. I Don't Want My Whole Life Crammed Into A Single Word. A Story. I Want To Find Something Else, Unknowable, Some Place To Be That's Not On The Map. A Real Adventure.' A Spinx. A Mystery. A Blank. Unknown. Undefined.

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

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

What You Forget When You're Planning A Hijack By Yourself Is Somewhere Along The Line, You Might Need To Neglect Your Hostages Just Long Enough So You Can Use The Bathroom.

Without Just One Nest A Bird Can Call The World Home Life Is Your Career

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

Let Me Be The Ring Leader In Your Guilt Gang-bang.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Kids, She Says. When They’re Little, They Believe Everything You Tell Them About The World. As A Mother, You’re The World Almanac And The Encyclopedia And The Dictionary And The Bible, All Rolled Up Together. But After They Hit Some Magic Age, It’s Just The Opposite. After That, You’re Either A Liar Or A Fool Or A Villain.

I Wish I Had The Courage Not To Fight And Doubt Everything... I Wish, Just Once, I Could Say, 'this. This Is Good Enough. Just Because I Choose It.

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.

The Worst Part Of Writing Fiction Is The Fear Of Wasting Your Life Behind A Keyboard. The Idea That, Dying, You'll Realize You Only Lived On Paper. Your Only Adventures Were Make-believe, And While The World Fought And Kissed, You Sat In Some Dark Room Masturbating And Making Money.

You Grow Up To Become Living Proof Of Your Parents' Limitations. Their Less-than Masterpiece.

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

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

We've Taken The World Apart But We Have No Idea What To Do With The Pieces.

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.

Your Heart Is My Piñata.

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

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

New Carpet Will Exude Poisonous Formaldehyde For Up To Two Years After It'd Been Laid. I Know The Feeling.

At First, The New Owner Pretends He Never Looked At The Living Room Floor.

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

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

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.

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.

Now Is The Autumn Of Our Ennui.

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?

I'm Only Confrontational With My Friends.

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!

They Should Let Some People Into The Library By Prescription Only

From Famous Artists To Building Contractors, We All Want To Leave Our Signature. Our Lasting Effect. Your Life After Death. We All Want To Explain Ourselves. Nobody Wants To Be Forgotten.

No, None Of Us Seem So Very Real. We're Only Supporting Characters In The Lives Of Each Other. Any Real Truth, Any Precious Fact Will Always Be Lost In A Mountain Of Shattered Make-believe.

You Could Stab A Knife Right Through My Heart And You'd Be Too Late.

Someone Bent On Suicide Won't Have Much Sense Of Humor Left.

Your Birth Is A Mistake You'll Spend Your Whole Life Trying To Correct.

With My Eyes Closed, I Ask If She Knows How This Will All Turn Out. "long-term Or Short-term?" She Asks. Both. "long-term," She Says, "we're All Going To Die. Then Our Bodies Will Rot. No Surprise There. Short-term, We're Going To Live Happily Ever After." Really? "really," She Says. "so Don't Sweat It.

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.

Make Me Into Anything, But Just Love Me.

Invisible Monsters

Welcome To Fight Club. The First Rule Of Fight Club Is: You Do Not Talk About Fight Club. The Second Rule Of Fight Club Is: You Do Not Talk About Fight Club! Third Rule Of Fight Club: If Someone Yells “stop!”, Goes Limp, Or Taps Out, The Fight Is Over. Fourth Rule: Only Two Guys To A Fight. Fifth Rule: One Fight At A Time, Fellas. Sixth Rule: The Fights Are Bare Knuckle. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Weapons. Seventh Rule: Fights Will Go On As Long As They Have To. And The Eighth And Final Rule: If This Is Your First Time At Fight Club, You Have To Fight.

If You Knew That Your Life Was Merely A Phase Or Short, Short Segment Of Your Entire Existence, How Would You Live? Knowing Nothing 'real' Was At Risk, What Would You Do? You'd Live A Gigantic, Bold, Fun, Dazzling Life. You Know You Would. That's What The Ghosts Want Us To Do - All The Exciting Things They No Longer Can.

Knowing Nothing

I Can Become Someone Else, Not Out Of Pressure And Desperation, But Merely Because A New Life Sounds Fun Or Interesting Or Joyful.

There Will Always Be An Underground.

You Love Me. You Ignore Me. You Save My Life, Then You Cook My Mother Into Soap.

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.

No Matter What Else You Came Up Against, If You Could Smile And Laugh While A Monkey Did You With Chestnuts In A Dank Concrete Basement While Somebody Took Pictures, Well, Any Other Situation Would Be A Piece Of Cake

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.

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

Yeah. Well. Whatever. You Can't Teach God Anything.

Fight Club Book

My Goal Is More To Be Remembered. They'll Remember This Thing And Like It In The Future. The Trick Is To Stay Remembered Long Enough For That To Happen.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Will Never Write A Sequel To Anything That I Will Ever Write.

Writers Should Be Able To Fully Deduct From Their Taxes All Writing-related Expenses, Including Alcohol, Parking Tickets, Court Judgments, Fines For Lewd Public Behavior, Zoloft, And Cigarettes.

Discovering The 'impossible' Ending To A New Book Makes Me Sick With Joy And Relief.

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

This Was Freedom. Losing All Hope Was Freedom.

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

Everything You See Is Based On Fact Of A Event Thats Already Happen, Even Light Only Travels So Fast.

I Think We're In An Age Starved For Genuine Experiences, Instead Of Cathartic Phony Experiences Through The Media, Structured, Engineered Experiences. And Those Are The Fast Food, The Masturbation Of Experience. They Don't Really Exhaust Any Aspect Of Ourselves; They Don't Make Us Any Stronger.

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak.

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.

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

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

Carl Jung Called This His Shadow Work. He Said We Never See Others. Instead We See Only Aspects Of Ourselves That Fall Over Them. Shadows. Projections. Our Associations.

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

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

History Is Nothing Except Monsters Or Victims. Or Witnesses.

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

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.

No Matter How Many Luxuries You Get, Something Will Be Missing. No Matter How Carefully You Choose, You'll Never Be Totally Happy.

The Moment The World Declares A Person To Be Immortal, At That Moment The Person Will Strive To Prove The World Wrong. In The Face Of Glowing Press Releases And Reviews The Most Heralded Women Starve Themselves Or Cut Themselves Or Poison Themselves. Or They Find A Man Who's Happy To Do That For Him.

If There’s Any Trick To Doing A Job You Hate . . . Mrs. Clark Says It’s To Find A Job You Hate Even More.

It's Nice To See Something More Pathetic Than I Feel Right Now.

If You Look At Old Pictures, Irene Casey Is So Pretty. Not Just Young, But Pretty The Way You Look When Your Face Goes Smooth, The Skin Around Your Eyes And Lips Relaxed, The Pretty You Only Look When You Love The Person Taking The Picture.

"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.

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.

Those Who Can Forget The Past Are Way Ahead Of The Rest Of Us.

Forget The Past

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Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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