Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

A book is as private and consensual as sex.

At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you'll have left.

Young people want mirrors. Older people want art.

people had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. nobody realized how boring it would become. with the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and addressed and recorded. nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. on a roller coaster. at a movie. still, it would always be that kind of faux excitement. you know the dinosaurs aren't going to eat the kids. the test audiences have outvoted any chance of even a major faux disaster. and because there's no possibility of real disaster, real risk, we're left with no chance for real salvation. real elation. real excitement. Joy. Discovery. Invention.

the laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.

without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace.

In Hell you'd be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. The same goes for earth.

Your heart is my piñata.

Going to spring break at Ft. Lauderdale, getting drunk and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of a patriarchal society that you no longer know what's best for yourself. A damsel too dumb to know she is even in distress.

If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.

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

The masochist bullies the sadist into action. The most passive person is actually an aggressor. Every day, just you living means the misery and death of plants and animals- and even some people. "Slaughterhouses, factory farms, sweatshops," she says, "like it or not, that's what your money buys."

Make me into anything, but just love me.

Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.

Just for the record, she still loves you. She wouldn't bother to torture you if she didn't.

We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.

There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. These people with dead children, you want to tell them, go ahead. Blame yourself. There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper.