Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

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

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

In journalism school, what they want you to be is a camera. A trained, objective, detached professional. Accurate, polished, and observant. They want you to believe that the new and you are always two separate things. Killers and reporters are mutually exclusive. Whatever the story, this isn't about you.

Anymore, no one's mind is their own. You can't concentrate. You can't think. There's always some noise worming in. Singers shouting. Dead people laughing. Actors crying. All these little doses of emotion. Someone's always spraying the air with their mood.

It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.

Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.

Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.

All I do is track a profane route to something (I hope) profound. Like swimming a river of shit for a kiss.

The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday.

We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.

"I used to think the secret to a happy ending was to bring down the curtain at the exact right time. A moment after happiness, then everything's all wrong again." p76

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

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

How everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you're proud of will end up as trash.