Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.

The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.

Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave.

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?

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.

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.'

If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes.

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.

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.

Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring asshole and proud of it.

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.

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.

There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.

I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, 'Why?' Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, 'No, that's not right.' Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.

Las Vegas looks the way you'd imagine heaven must look at night.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?

We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.

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.

Make me into anything, but just love me.

"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."

Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you.

All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.

If people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention.

Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it.

After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.

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.

The most boring scenes are the scenes where a character is alone.

Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.

Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things - they save you.

Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.

It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher.

Burn the Louvre, and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. This way at least, God would know our names.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.

When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.

You think maybe if you just work harder and faster, you can hold off the chaos, but then one day you’re changing a patio light bulb with a five-year life span and you realize how you’ll only be changing this light maybe ten more times before you’ll be dead.

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.

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?

What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.

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.

Your heart is my piñata.

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.

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.