Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

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

The world will always punish the few people with special talents the rest of us don't recognize as real.

Some stories, Mr.Whitter would say, you tell them and you use them up. Other stories, they use you up. p288

Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

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.

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

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

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

I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions, because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.

The things you used to own, now they own you.

You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.

"It's not a matter of right and wrong," Mr. Whittier would say. Really, there is no wrong. Not in our minds. Our own reality. You can never set off to do the wrong thing. You can never say the wrong thing. In your own mind, you are always right. Every action you take--what you do or say or how you choose to appear--is automatically right the moment you act.

The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.

I lost my virginity through my ear.