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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.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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With My Eyes Closed,

Chuck Palahniuk

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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.

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A Good Story Isn't The One That Shuts Everyone Down And Sort Of Leaves Them In Silent Awe. A Good Story Is One That, Even Before You Finish The Anecdote, You Can See Their Eyes Shining Because It Has So Resonated With Something From Their Own Lives That Everyone In The Group Has A Version Of The Same Story And They Cannot Wait To Tell It, And That They're Going To Compete To Make Their Version Even More Extreme Than Your Version. So Your Version Is Just A Seed.

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

The Ultimate Joke Was The Idea That Capitalism Would Eat Its Own Feces In Order To Make Money, That Would Make Fun Of Itself If Capitalism Thought There Was A Buck In It.

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

Give Me Romance. Flash. Give Me Denial.

You Know, The Condom Is The Glass Slipper Of Our Generation. You Slip It On When You Meet A Stranger. You Dance All Night, Then You Throw It Away.

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.

Who You Are Moment To Moment Is Just A Story.

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

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

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.

I Think Standardization Is Really The First Step To Something Being Commodified.

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.

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

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

Without Access To True Chaos, We'll Never Have True Peace. Unless Everything Can Get Worse, It Won't Get Any Better.

As Young People We Want Something To Slow Us Down And Keep Us Trapped In One Place Long Enough To Look Below The Surface Of The World. That Disaster Is A Car Crash Or A War. To Make Us Sit Still. It Can Be Getting Cancer Or Getting Pregnant. The Important Part Is How It Seems To Catch Us By Surprise. That Disaster Stops Us From Living The Life We'd Planned As Children - A Life Of Constant Dashing Around.

The Girl Is Infectious Human Waste, And She's Confused And Afraid To Commit To The Wrong Thing And So She Won't Commit To Anything.

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

The Most Boring Scenes Are The Scenes Where A Character Is Alone.

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.

Honest Is How I Want To Look. The Truth Doesn't Glitter And Shine.

Picture The Moment When Your Mom And Dad First Saw You As Something Other Than A Pretty, Tiny Version Of Them. You As Them, But Improved. Better Educated. Innocent. Then Picture When You Stopped Being Their Dream.

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.

There's A Moment In Every Book When The Book Turns And It Surprises Me.

Even If I Overcompensate, Nobody Will Ever Want Me. Not Seth. Not My Folks. You Can’t Kiss Someone Who Has No Lips. Oh, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me. I’ll Be Anybody You Want Me To Be

We Thought All This Teaching Was To Make Us Smart. What It Did Was Make Us Stupid. With All The Little Facts We Learned, We Never Had The Time To Think.

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

Being Tired Isn't The Same As Being Rich, But Most Times It's Close Enough.

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

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.

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

Imagine Books And Music And Movies Being Filtered And Homogenized. Certified. Approved For Consumption. People Will Be Happy To Give Up Most Of Their Culture For The Assurance That The Tiny Bit That Comes Through Is Safe And Clean. White Noise.

At That Moment, It Seemed The Whole World Cared What Happened To Him. All Those People Were Hugging Him And Petting His Hair. Everybody Asked If He Was Okay. It Seemed That Moment Would Last Forever. That You Had To Risk Your Life To Get Love. You Had To Get Right To The Edge Of Death To Ever Be Saved.

If You Ask Me, Reincarnation Is Just Another Way To Procrastinate.

Procrastination

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

Only After Disaster Can We Be Resurrected.

Fight Club Book

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.

I Haven't Shoplifted Since I Was 13.

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.

Why Is It You Feel Like A Dope If You Laugh Alone, But That's Usually How You End Up Crying?

Really, Just Looking Around, You Feel A Twinge Of Pity For The Poor Souls Who Succeeded In Getting Past The Pearly Gates. One Can't Help But Picture The Lackluster Vip Lounge In Heaven, A Kind Of Nonalcoholic Ice-cream Social Starring Harriet Beecher Stowe And Mahatma Gandhi. Hardly Anyone's Idea Of A "with-it" Social Register.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Quitting Your Job

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I Want My Whole Life Lined With A Topical Anesthetic.

Find Out What You're Afraid Of And Go Live There.

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.

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.

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

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Just For The Record, She Still Loves You. She Wouldn't Bother To Torture You If She Didn't.

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All Major Publishing Houses Have These Big Fat Biographies Sitting There, Waiting For People To Die. All You Have To Do Is Slap On The End And Put In On The Market. It's That Kind Of Commoditization And Completion Of Your Life Before You Die - And This Kind Of Imposition Of A Public Idea Of Self That Replaces The Actual Living Self - That I Find So Frightening.

Publishing House

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.

The Avant-garde In Every Field Consists Of The Lonely, The Friendless, The Uninvited. All Progress Is The Product Of The Unpopular.

I Have An Experience With As Many Of My Readers As Possible That's Really Genuine. I Love It When They Write To Me, And I'm Able To Send Them Things. I Love Meeting Them In Person, And Even If It's Only For A Moment I Love Having That Physical, Touching Interaction.

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

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

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.

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

I'm Working Harder Than I Have Ever Worked In My Entire Life, But What The Hell, My Life Is My Job Now, And My Job Is My Life And That's The Way It Should Be.

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

Yes, These Are Bruises From Fighting And I'm Okay With That.

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

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

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

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

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.

It Is A Hundred-year-old Witch Book, Bound In Human Skin And Probably Written In Ancient Cum...you Lick It!

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

I Still Love Him So Much I'll Hide Any Amount Of Conjugated Estrogen In His Food. So Much I'll Do Anything To Destroy Him.

I Still Love Him

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.

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's Making Sure Your Imagination Withers. Until It's As Useful As Your Appendix. He's Making Sure Your Attention Is Always Filled. And This Being Fed, It's Worse Than Being Watched. With The World Always Filling You, No One Has To Worry About What's In Your Mind. With Everyone's Imagination Atrophied, No One Will Ever Be A Threat To The World.

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

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.

Everything Is A Self-portrait. A Diary. Your Whole Drug History’s In A Strand Of Your Hair. Your Fingernails. The Forensic Details. The Lining Of Your Stomach Is A Document. The Calluses On Your Hand Tell All Your Secrets. Your Teeth Give You Away. Your Accent. The Wrinkles Around Your Mouth And Eyes. Everything You Do Shows Your Hand.

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

The Girls You Meet Are Never Very Far From Their Worst-case Scenario.

Worst Case Scenario

Pretty Much Always. We Need To Tell The Story Of Our Life To Someone.

Mylife Might Be Little And Boring, But At Least It’s Mine - Not Some Assembly-line, Secondhand, Hand-me-down Life.

By The Time You Read This, You'll Be Older Than You Remember.

If You Love Something Set It Free, But Don't Be Surprised If It Comes Back With Herpes.

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.

There Are The Most Fantastic, Beautiful Things And People Out There. It’s Up To You To Find Them.

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

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.

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.

Anytime My Work Can Coax Bodily Fluids Out Of Someone, I'm Happy.

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

Just Each Of Us Being Me, Me, Me First. The Murderer, The Victim, The Witness Each Of Us Thinks Our Role Is The Lead. Probably That Goes For Anybody In The World.

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

Good As It Gets

When You Don't Share Your Problems, You Resent Hearing The Problems Of Other People.

You Can Only Hold A Smile For So Long, After That It's Just Teeth.

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

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.

As An Artist You Organize Your Life So That You Get A Chance To Paint, A Window Of Time, But That's No Guarantee You'll Create Anything Worth All Your Effort. You're Always Haunt By The Idea You're Wasting Your Life.

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.

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.

My Writing Process Isn't A Very Organized Thing. The Actual Writing Part Is A Tiny Part Of My Life. I Often Write In Public. I Bring My Laptop Or Write Freehand In Notebooks. Then, I'll Read Through Them While I Exercise Or Walk The Dog. The Very Last Thing I Do Is The Sitting Alone At The Computer Part.

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

I Tagged A First-timer One Night At Fight Club. That Saturday Night, A Young Guy With An Angel’s Face Came To His First Fight Club, And I Tagged Him For A Fight. That’s The Rule. If It’s Your First Night In Fight Club, You Have To Fight. I Knew That So I Tagged Him Because The Insomnia Was On Again, And I Was In A Mood To Destroy Something Beautiful.

She Drank A Glass Of Wine And Looked For Something New To Ruin With Her Lack Of Talent.

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.

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.

History Is Filled With Brilliant People Who Wanted To Fix Things And Just Made Them Worse.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Future You Have, Tomorrow, Won't Be The Same Future You Had, Yesterday.

She's So Thin She's Either Dying Or Rich.

The Old Rule About How A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever, In My Experience, Even The Most Beauteous Thing Is Only A Joy For About Three Hours, Tops. After That, She'll Want To Tell You All About Her Childhood Traumas. Part Of Meeting These Jail Girls Is It's So Sweet To Look At Your Watch And Know She'll Be Behind Bars In Half An Hour.

Screenwriters Get Paid A Hell Of A Lot More Money But Their Level Of Frustration Seems To Be So High That I Don't Want That.

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

A Male Chauvinist Pig Isn't Born, He's Made, And More And More Of Them Are Being Made By Women.

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

A Short Story Is Something That You Can Hold In Your Mind. You Can Really Analyze How The Entire Thing Works, Like A Machine

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

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.

He Was Assaulting The World By Assaulting Himself.

The Bigger The Mistake Looks, The Better Chance I'll Have To Break Out And Live A Real Life. Our Real Discoveries Come From Chaos. - Brandy Alexander

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

A Shadow Of A Reflection Of An Image Of An Illusion.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

One Of Those Days

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.

...no Way Could I Fall In Love. I Just Couldn't Go There Yet. Settle For Less. I Didn't Want To Process Through Anything. I Didn't Want To Pick Up Any Pieces. Lower My Expectations.

Falling In Love

When You Reach The End Of Your Life - Trust Me, You Won't Look Back And Savor The Moments You Spent Alone.

You're A Product Of Our Language, And How Our Laws Are And How We Believe Our God Wants Us. Every Bitty Molecule About You Has Already Been Thought Out By Some Million People Before You. Anything You Can Do Is Boring And Old And Perfectly Okay. You're Safe Because You're So Trapped Inside Your Culture. Anything You Can Conceive Of Is Fine Because You Can Conceive Of It. You Can't Imagine Any Way To Escape. There's No Way You Can Get Out.the World Is Your Cradle And Your Trap.

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.

Optimism Is The First Symptom That Any Disease Is Fatal.

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

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

Fight Club Book

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

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

All God Does Is Watch Us And Kill Us When We Get Boring. We Must Never, Ever Be Boring.

"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’re Training A New Employee,' Says Mrs. Clark, 'to Take Over Your Boring Old Job.' When You Raise A Child.

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.

I Often Need Physical Gesture To Balance Dialogue. If I Write In Public, Every Time I Need To Know What A Character Is Doing With His Hand Or Foot, I Can Look Up And Study People And Find Compelling Gestures That I Can Harvest. Writing In Public Gives You That Access To A Junkyard Of Details All Around You.

Our Culture Has Made Us All The Same. No One Is Truly White Or Black Or Rich, Anymore. We All Want The Same. Individually, We Are Nothing.

Seek Midday Nourishment. Visit Memorial Acclaimed War Hero Colonel Sanders.

Besides, It Happens Fast For Some People And Slow For Some, Accidents Or Gravity, But We All End Up Mutilated.

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

Sometimes The Very Best Way To Deal With Unpleasant Things Is To Depict Them In Ways That Allow People To Laugh At Them And Destroy The Power Of Unsayable Things, Rather Than Refusing To Acknowledge Them.

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

Coping Mechanisms

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.

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

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

Yes, I Kidnapped That Lindberg Baby.

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.

Nothing Was Solved When The Fight Was Over, But Nothing Mattered.

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

A Child Who Is Disillusioned Abruptly, By His Peers Or Siblings, Being Ridiculed For His Faith And Imagination, May Choose Never To Believe In Anything- Tangible Or Intangible- Again. To Never Trust Or Wonder.

The Most Boring Thing In The Entire World Is Nudity. The Second Most Boring Thing Is Honesty.

His Computer Password Is "password.

For This Moment, Nothing Matters. Look Up Into The Stars And You're Gone.

Find A Guy Who Calls You Beautiful Instead Of Hot, Who Calls You Back When You Hang Up On Him, Who Will Lie Under The Stars And Listen To Your Heartbeat, Or Will Stay Awake Just To Watch You Sleep...wait For The Boy Who Kisses Your Forehead, Who Wants To Show You Off To The World When You Are In Sweats, Who Holds Your Hand In Front Of His Friends, Who Thinks You're Just As Pretty Without Makeup On. One Who Is Constantly Reminding You Of How Much He Cares And How Lucky His Is To Have You....the One Who Turns To His Friends And Says, 'that's Her.'

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.

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.

That Quest For Something Pretty. A Cheat. A Cliche. Flowers And Christmas Lights, It's What We're Programmed To Love.

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

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

I Am Jack's Smirking Revenge.

The Tiny Space, The Toilet, Two Hundred Strangers Just A Few Inches Away, It's So Exciting, The Lack Of Room To Maneuver, It Helps If You're Double-jointed. Use Your Imagination. Some Creativity And A Few Simple Stretching Exercises And You Can Be Knock, Knock, Knockin' On Heaven's Door. You'll Be Amazed How Time Flies.

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.

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.

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

What I Did Was Pour Out About A Gallon Of Chanel Number Five And Put A Burning Wedding Invitation To It, And Boom, I'm Recycling.

Am I Sleeping? Have I Slept At All? This Is Insomnia.

No Matter How Much You Think You Love Somebody, You'll Step Back When The Pool Of Their Blood Edges Up Too Close.

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.

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.

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

You Realize That There's No Point In Doing Anything If Nobody's Watching. You Wonder, If There Had Been A Low Turnout At The Crucifixion, Would They Have Rescheduled?

According To Plato, We Don't Learn Anything. Our Soul Has Lived So Many Lives That We Know Everything. Teachers And Education Can Only Remind Us Of What We Already Know.

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

The Only Person We'll Hate More Than Each Other Is Ourselves.

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

With Insomnia, You're Never Really Awake; But You're Never Really Asleep.

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.

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