Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.
Chuck PalahniukPublic 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.
Chuck PalahniukWhen nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd never stare long enough to get if they'd even just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.
Chuck PalahniukFor 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.
Chuck PalahniukAs 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.
Chuck PalahniukI 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.
Chuck Palahniuk