Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead.

By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember.

College is like a fountain of knowledge - and the students are there to drink

Folks build a reputation by attacking you while you’re alive - or praising you after you ain’t.

...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.

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.

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?

I have a lot of money.

you're doomed at being you.

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

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.

A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.

Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.

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.

and i can't stand the idea of being alone. i can't bear the thought of being free.

I don't do much more than organise other people's ideas and insights and thoughts, and sort of harvest them, and inventory them and present them.

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

He was the kind of boy any young girl should date while she's still able to recover.

Control the things you can control. As for the rest - God bless it all.

On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

We all want to explain ourselves. Nobody wants to be forgotten.

What if reality is nothing but some disease?

History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.

Who you are moment to moment is just a story.

You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.

Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.

It's not living alone if you keep a rifle under the bed.

There are only patterns. Patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns, patterns hidden by patterns, patterns within patterns.

you can make mean anything.

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.

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.

People didn't know who I was or why I was there, so they started inventing stories about me. I was a registered sex offender and I'd just been released from prison and was being forced to do community-service work. I was a murderer, an arsonist - all these horrific things had been projected on me because no one knew what to make of this white guy who showed up and made toast at 5 o'clock every morning.

This wasn't any mere song and dance; here was a bold, blaring declaration howling itself into the empty face of death.

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.

It only takes one mistake,' the Dan Banyan guy says, 'and nothing else you ever do will matter.' With his empty hand, he takes one of my hands. His fingers feel hot, fever-hot, and pounding with his heartbeats. He turns my hand palm-up saying, 'No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you'll always be known for that one poor choice.' He sets the blue pill on my palm, saying, 'Do that one wrong thing- and you'll be dead for the rest of your life.

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.

So if you think this is going to save you...If you think anything is going to save you...Please consider this your final warning.

Skinny guys fight till they're burger.

By the time you're thirty, your worst enemy is yourself.

The most boring thing in the entire world is nudity. The second most boring thing is honesty.

Most times, it's just a lot easier not to let the world know what's wrong.

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.

It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.

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.

You can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.

There are worse things you can do to people you love than kill them.

Find good in what the world says is evil.

For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel peaceful. Not happy. Not sad. Not anxious. Not horny. Just all the higher parts of my brain closing up shop. The cerebral cortex. The cerebellum. That's where my problem is. I'm now simplifying myself. Somewhere balanced in the perfect middle between happiness and sadness. Because sponges never have a bad day.