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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.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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You Don't Have Ideas

Chuck Palahniuk

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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.

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

In Light This Bright, After So Long In The Dark, Everything We Can See Is Only Black And White. Only Glaring Shape-outlines We Have To Blink Against.

Black And White

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

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

To Preserve Yourself As The Center Of The World, To Stay Your Own Best Authority On Everything, Your Own Expert On All Topics, Infallible, Omniscient. Always, Every Time Of The Month, Forever: Use Birth Control.

The Gyms You Go To Are Crowded With Guys Trying To Look Like Men, As If Being A Man Means Looking The Way A Sculptor Or An Art Director Says.

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

Picture Anybody Growing Up So Stupid He Didn't Know That Hope Is Just Another Phase You'll Grow Out Of.

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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.

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

And I Can't Stand The Idea Of Being Alone. I Can't Bear The Thought Of Being Free.

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

He Was Assaulting The World By Assaulting Himself.

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Trust Me, The Being-dead Part Is Much Easier Than The Dying Part. If You Can Watch Much Television, Then Being Dead Will Be A Cinch. Actually, Watching Television And Surfing The Internet Are Really Excellent Practice For Being Dead.

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.

That’s The American Dream: To Make Your Life Into Something You Can Sell.

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.

Abortion Occurs So Frequently In My Stories. Abortion Sort Of Synthesizes Both Sex And Death. To Have Sex And Death Placed As Close To One Another As Possible Is Always A Goal Of Mine.

When I See People Talking On The Internet About Me Or My Work It's Almost Always More A Description Of Themselves And So I Never Really Think Of Myself As Anything More Than Just Who I Always Was.

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.

Some Stories, She’d Say, The More You Tell Them, The Faster You Use Them Up. Those Kind, The Drama Burns Off, And Every Version, They Sound More Silly And Flat. The Other Kind Of Story, It Uses You Up. The More You Tell It, The Stronger It Gets. Those Kind Of Stories Only Remind You How Stupid You Were. Are. Will Always Be.

There Are Only Patterns, Patterns On Top Of Patterns, Patterns That Affect Other Patterns. Patterns Hidden By Patterns. Patterns Within Patterns. If You Watch Close, History Does Nothing But Repeat Itself. What We Call Chaos Is Just Patterns We Haven't Recognized. What We Call Random Is Just Patterns We Can't Decipher. What We Can't Understand We Call Nonsense. What We Can't Read We Call Gibberish. There Is No Free Will. There Are No Variables.

If You Haven't Already Noticed, All My Books Are About A Lonely Person Looking For Some Way To Connect With Other People.in A Way, That Is The Opposite Of The American Dream: To Get So Rich You Can Rise Above The Rabble, All Those People On The Freeway Or, Worse, The Bus.

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

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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.

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

The Problem With Educating Stupid People Was That They Didn’t Know They Were Stupid. The Same Went For Curing Crazy People.

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

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Dude, The Place Is Filling Up," I Say. "it Feels Like We're Living In The Bottom Half Of An Hourglass." Like Somehow We're Running Out Of Time.

The Only Difference Between Suicide And Martyrdom Is Press Coverage.

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

I Figure If Eve Could Get Us Into This Mess, I Could Get Us Out. After All, God Really Likes To See A Go-getter.

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Only After Disaster Can We Be Resurrected. It's Only After You've Lost Everything That You're Free To Do Anything. Nothing Is Static, Everything Is Evolving, Everything Is Falling Apart.

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I Am The Cause Of All My Upsets. I Am My Worst Enemy.

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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Coping Mechanisms

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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.

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

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.'

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Invisible Monsters

It's Exhausting, The Energy It Takes To Unknow A Truth.

Every Masterpiece Is Just Dirt And Ash Put Together In Some Perfect Way.

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Fight Club Book

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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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?

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

The Only Thing I Know Is Everything You Love Will Die.

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Maybe Self-improvement Isn't The Answer, Maybe Self-destruction Is The Answer.

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The Joke Is, We All Have The Same Punchline.

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

Because Everything Up To Now Is A Story And Everything After Now Is A Story.

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

For The Most Part My Friends Can Always Be More Entertaining Than The Tube Ever Can Be.

You Have Endless Ways You Can Commit Suicide Without Dying Dying.

The Lower You Fall, The Higher You'll Fly.

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

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

At This Rate, We'll Never Get To The Future.

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

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.

Life Is Short, Death Is Forever

An Important Part Of Building A New Culture Was Allowing People To Complain About Their Past. At First, The More They Complained, The Worse The Past Would Seem. But By Venting, People Could Start To Resolve The Past. By Bitching And Bitching And Bitching, They Could Exhaust The Drama Of Their Own Horror Stories. Grow Bored. Only Then Could They Accept A New Story For Their Lives. Move Forward.

Jump Way Back To One Time, Evie And Me Did This Fashion Shoot In A Junk Yard, In A Slaughterhouse, In A Mortuary. We'd Go Anywhere To Look Good By Comparison, And What I Realize Is Mostly What I Hate About Evie Is The Fact That She's So Vain And Stupid And Needy. But What I Hate Most Is How She's Just Like Me. What I Really Hate Is Me So I Hate Pretty Much Everybody.

The Only Way To Find True Happiness Is To Risk Being Completely Cut Open.

The Cancer I Don't Have Is Everywhere Now.

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

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 One You Love And The One Who Loves You Are Never, Ever The Same Person.

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.

Believe In Me And Die Forever.

I Learned All Those Jokes In Second Grade. Second Grade Is Really Where They Tell You Those Horrific Jokes, Racist Jokes And Misogynistic Jokes That You Have No Idea What They Mean, And You Just Memorize Them Because They Have A Very Strong Effect, They Make People Laugh In This Kind Of Nervous, Horrible Way, And It's Only Later That You Realize That You've Got A Head Full Of Crap.

What Would Tyler Durden Do?

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.

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

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

I Try To Get Centered: Watching White Moon Face The Stars Never Feel Anger Blah, Blah, Blah, The End

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

I Want To Have Your Abortion.

It's Easy To Cry When You Realize That Everyone You Love Will Reject You Or Die.

We All Want To Explain Ourselves. Nobody Wants To Be Forgotten.

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

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

Do You Remember When You Were 10 Or 11 Years Old And You Really Thought Your Folks Were The Best? They Were Completely Omniscient And You Took Their Word For Everything. And Then You Got Older And You Went Through This Hideous Age When Suddenly They Were The Devil, They Were Bullies, And They Didn't Know Anything.

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

The Same Way A Compact Disk Isn't Responsible For What's Recorded On It, That's How We Are. You're About As Free To Act As A Programmed Computer. You're About As One-of-a-kind As A Dollar Bill.

Anymore, No One's Mind Is Their Own.

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 Unreal Is More Powerful Than The Real. Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You Can Imagine It. Because Its Only Intangible Ideas, Concepts, Beliefs, Fantasies That Last. Stone Crumbles. Wood Rots. People, Well, They Die. But Things As Fragile As A Thought, A Dream, A Legend, They Can Go On And On. If You Can Change The Way People Think. The Way They See Themselves. The Way They See The World. You Can Change The Way People Live Their Lives. That's The Only Lasting Thing You Can Create.

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.

The One Thing I Cannot Stand Is When I Do Interviews, When I Interview People, And I Listen To The Tapes And I Hear Myself Talking And Sort Of Stumble And Stammer, Or I Hear The Horrible Sound Of My Own Voice, Or God Forbid I See Myself On Video, There Is That Complete Revulsion With Seeing How I Occur In The World.

The Girl's Lover Was Gone, But His Shadow Was Still There.

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

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

If You Flee From The Things You Fear, There's No Resolution.

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.

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

The Strength Of Film Is Its Accessibility And Immediacy. But The Strength Of Books Is That Freedom To Really Depict Anything You Want Because People Are Going To Be Reading It In Private. So, I'm Always Trying To Write With The Immediacy And The Constant Motion Of Film But I'm Also Trying To Write With The Complete Freedom Of Subject Matter That Books Have.

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

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

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

Rant Casey Used To Say, "no Matter What Happens, It's Always Now..." Talk About Cryptic. I Think What Rant Meant Was, We Live In The Present Moment Of Reality, And No Matter What's Come Before, No Matter How Much We Loved A Person Or A Dog, When It Attacks Us We'll React To That Moment Of Danger.

What Kind Of Dining Set Defines Me As A Person?

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

I Am Jack's Smirking Revenge.

Everyone's In Their Own Personal Coma.

She's Not Wearing Makeup So Her Face Just Looks Like Skin.

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.

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

Somehow It Seems Wrong To Photograph A Blind Person. It’s Like Stealing Something Valuable They Don’t Even Know They Own.

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

If Your Body Is A Temple, You Can Pile Up Too Much Deferred Maintenance. If Your Body Is A Temple, Mine Was A Real Fixer-upper.

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

Invisible Monsters

You Had To Risk Your Life To Get Love. You Had To Get Right To The Edge Of Death To Ever Be Saved.

Parenthood Is The Opiate Of The Masses.

The Damaged Love The Damaged. True Fact.

About My Boss, Tyler Tells Me, If I'm Really Angry, I Should Go To The Post Office And Fill Out A Change-of-address Card And Have All His Mail Forwarded To Rugby, North Dakota.

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.

This Isn't About Love As In Caring. This Is About Property As In Ownership.

Property Ownership

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

Without Animals, There Would Be No Humanity. In A World Of Just People, People Will Mean Nothing . . .

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

These Days, Most Of The People You Hear Laughing Are Dead.

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.

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

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

The Difference Between How You Look And How You See Yourself Is Enough To Kill Most People. And Maybe The Reason Vampires Don’t Die Is Because They Can Never See Themselves In Photographs Or Mirrors.

More And More, The Hardest Part Of Crying Is When I Can't Stop.

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.

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

Fight Club Book

Fight Club Novel

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.

What They Don't Teach You In Art School Is How Your Whole Life Is About Discovering Who You Already Were.

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.

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

When You Go Out With A Drunk, You’ll Notice How A Drunk Fills Your Glass So He Can Empty His Own. As Long As You’re Drinking, Drinking Is Okay. Two’s Company. Drinking Is Fun. If There’s A Bottle, Even If Your Glass Isn’t Empty, A Drunk, He’ll Pour A Little In Your Glass Before He Fills His Own. This Only Looks Like Generosity.

You Gain Power By Pretending To Be Weak. By Contrast, You Make People Feel Strong. You Save People By Letting Them Save You.

The Future Is Just Wasted On Some People.

Invisible Monsters

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

Worst Case Scenario

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

A Baby Is Such A Blank Slate, Like Training The Understudy For A Role You're Planning To Leave. You Truly Hope Your Replacement Will Do The Play Justice, But In Secret You Want Future Critics To Say You Played The Character Better.

More Than One Side? You're Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Jackass!

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

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.

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

Every Generation Wants To Be The Last.

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.

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

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

We Don't Have A Great War In Our Generation, Or A Great Depression, But We Do, We Have A Great War Of The Spirit. We Have A Great Revolution Against The Culture. The Great Depression Is Our Lives. We Have A Spiritual Depression.

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

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.

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.

Cassie Wright Knows, The Moment You Make Yourself Available To Any Man, He Starts To Take You For Granted

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Barbara Johnson

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