To a certain extent everybody has a certain sort of way of being a persona that they learn how to be when they're really little. They figure out that if they're really funny, or really pretty, or if they work really, really hard or are really smart, then that's what's going to get them by. That is what is going to make people like them.
Chuck PalahniukFind joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it.
Chuck PalahniukI remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.
Chuck PalahniukNo matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.
Chuck PalahniukIn a city this size, every year, hundreds of husbands walk away. Kids leave home. Wives escape. People disappear.
Chuck PalahniukIf there had been zombies on the iceberg when the Titanic hit it, that would have made a much better movie.
Chuck PalahniukAny time some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink.
Chuck PalahniukMen are destroyed for being rebellious, and women destroy themselves by failing to be rebellious. Unless you can make that next jump to either getting along with people or resisting people, you are ultimately destroying yourself.
Chuck Palahniuk"This isn’t really death," Tyler says, "We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old." I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you’re thinking of vampires.
Chuck Palahniuksome soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.
Chuck PalahniukBrandy is so attractive you could chop her head off and put it on blue velvet in the window at Tiffany's and somebody would buy it for a million dollars.
Chuck PalahniukScreenwriters 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.
Chuck PalahniukWith every lecture, you’re forced to look again at every choice you’ve made over the lesson-by-lesson chain of your entire life. And after all these years, you see how little you have to work with, how limited your life and education have been. How scant was your courage and curiosity. Not to mention your expectations.
Chuck PalahniukIn the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was kind of tumbler. The sale as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. This isn't suffering. It's erosion.
Chuck PalahniukPeople fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.
Chuck PalahniukI want to find something else, unknowable, some place that's not on the map. A real adventure.
Chuck Palahniukyou're a product just as much. a product of a product. the people who design cars, they're products, your teachers, products. the minister in your church, another product.
Chuck PalahniukTyler 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.
Chuck PalahniukWhy do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.
Chuck PalahniukIf you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane.
Chuck PalahniukIf we can forgive what’s been done to us... If we can forgive what we’ve done to others... If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being villains or victims. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.
Chuck PalahniukI used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.
Chuck PalahniukBut 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.
Chuck PalahniukNo matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.
Chuck PalahniukThere'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.
Chuck PalahniukSo this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn’t funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it. That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can’t control life, at least you can control your version.
Chuck Palahniuk