Chuck Palahniuk famous quotes

For sure, they don't teach you this in history class, but in colonial times, the person who got left in the stocks overnight was nothing less than fair game for everybody to nail. Men or women, anybody bent over had no way of knowing who was doing the ram job, and this was the real reason you never wanted to end up here unless you had a family member or a friend who'd stand with you the whole time. To protect you. To watch your ass, for real.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Jobs #Real #Men

That guy behind me on the airplane? He's been kicking my seat because he hates me. He's kicking my seat because he hates me and I'm gonna kill him. When we get off this plane, I'm gonna make eye contact. I'm gonna kill that guy. And all of that is just stuff in my head, but it's good to get rid of that stuff.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Hate #Airplane #Eye

That if you could acquire enough, accomplish enough, you’d never want to own or do another thing. That if you could eat or sleep enough, you’d never need more. That if enough people loved you, you’d stop needing love.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Sleep #People #Needs

I'm really glad that I spent my twenties messing around and having disaster after disaster - with people who were doing likewise - because it's really my greatest treasure now.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#People #Twenties #Treasure

You become smart when you don't need to quote someone anymore." I am still stupid: I quoted Chuck Palahiniuk
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Smart #Stupid #Needs

I think we're in an age starved for genuine experiences, instead of cathartic phony experiences through the media, structured, engineered experiences. And those are the fast food, the masturbation of experience. They don't really exhaust any aspect of ourselves; they don't make us any stronger.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Thinking #Media #Age

Think of spoiled cat food and ulcerated cankers and expired donor organs. That's how beautiful she looks.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Beautiful #Cat #Thinking

Somehow people have been sold on the idea that only professionals can entertain them, that only professionals can sing or tell jokes. And people are cut out of this creativity loop, and creativity is being limited to these large, centralized voices.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Creativity #Cutting #Ideas

When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd never stare long enough to get if they'd even just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Revenge #Long #Details

For the most part my friends can always be more entertaining than the tube ever can be.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Entertaining

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.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Fun #Drinking #Two

I hate how on TV they have to fill so many minutes. It means they have to put in anything, and by doing so they sort of trivialize news; news becomes this commodity that they need to fill dead time between commercials with.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Hate #Mean #Needs

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

#Life #Inspiring #Death

Language is what books do very well and movement is what movies does very well.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Book #Doe #Movement

Las Vegas looks the way you'd imagine heaven must look at night.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Night #Vegas #Heaven

Everybody's still miserable in the same way they've always been miserable, and more and more of my friends - especially my male friends - find themselves taking anti-anxiety, psychotropic drugs. It seems like everybody I know is wondering if they're really who they are, or once the prescription runs out, will they become someone different?
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Running #Anxiety #Drug

Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things- they save you.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Sometimes #Terrible #Things Happen

I am a writer and the greatest compliment I can get is to know that I've contributed language to the culture, that I've defined something, given it a name. So I think that is one of the great things a writer can do.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Thinking #Names #Culture

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Couple #Issues #Years

I have to have everything in my life completely fixed and perfect and cleaned up and I have to be complete with everyone in my life and I have seven days in which to do that. So I might make it to day three or four, but I've never made it all the way to day seven.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Perfect #Three #Four

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

#Love #Life #Dream

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 Palahniuk

#Smart #People #Littles

Discovering the 'impossible' ending to a new book makes me sick with joy and relief.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Book #Sick #Joy

I think America is just so in love with conflict.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Thinking #America #Conflict

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Inspiring #Effort #Inspire

If you worry about disaster all the time, that's what you're going to get.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Worry #Disaster

The rules that I adhere to are the rules of minimalism. And those rules kind of force writing to be more filmic... to have the immediacy and accessibility of film so that the reader really has to fill in a lot of the details.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Writing #Details #Kind

Real smarts begin when you quit quoting other people……..
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Real #Smart #People

Screenwriters 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 Palahniuk

#Frustration #Levels #Want

Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Giving Up #Book #White

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.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Book #Reading #Writing

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.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Inspirational #Happiness #Pain

Public taste changes and the aesthetic of a culture changes over time, so the idea isn't to appeal to the aesthetic of the moment and what people will like right now; the idea is to somehow keep yourself in the public memory so that as taste evolves it will eventually come to embrace your thing. So, it's about writing to be remembered rather than writing to be liked.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Memories #Writing #Ideas

If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Life #Literature #Want

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.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Father #Writing #Fighting

Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Mistake #Writing #Adventure

Demons are former celebrities who prey on their own insecurities.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Insecurity #Demon #Prey

There'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 Palahniuk

#Opposites #People #Firsts

I take pens and I write on the inside of my arm. When I'm with people and somebody says a really fascinating anecdote, or fact, or phrase, I'll write it on the inside of my arm. At the end of the day, I'll take the very best things that are on my arm and I'll copy them into a notebook that I always carry and only when the weather is absolutely terrible will I really key the very best of that notebook into the computer. At that point, it's all sort of censored twice - only the best things go from the arm to the book and only the best things go from the book to the computer.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Notebook #Writing #Keys

The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Music #Art #Book

The one thing I cannot stand is when I do interviews, when I interview people, and I listen to the tapes and I hear myself talking and sort of stumble and stammer, or I hear the horrible sound of my own voice, or God forbid I see myself on video, there is that complete revulsion with seeing how I occur in the world.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Talking #Voice #People

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.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Dark #Night #Reality

You couldn't have small, dying children in a movie without really bringing everyone down, but you can in comics.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Children #Dying

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

#Heart #Laughing #Stories

So often with beginning writers, the story that they want to start with is the most important story of their life - my molestation, my this, my horrible drug addiction - they want to tell that most important story, and they don't have the skills to tell it yet, so it ends up becoming a comedy. A powerful story told poorly becomes funny, it just makes people laugh behind their hands.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Powerful #Hands #Skills

Every woman is just a different kind of problem.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Different #Kind #Problem

The last story you should write is the most important story. You should start with a story that is just an amusing, entertaining, fun story to write and learn your writing chops with the least important things before you start applying them to the most important things.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Fun #Writing #Important

Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep...wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you're just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky his is to have you....The one who turns to his friends and says, 'that's her.'
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Beautiful #Stars #Lying

I thought why not write a kind of mystery, murder, thriller book, but use romance language where the language plays completely against the very dark subject matter, that very strange murderous plot, but use that Harlequin Romance language.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Book #Writing #Dark

And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Real #Islands #People

I don't want to die without any scars.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Life #Want #Scar

The only place where you can really surprise or shock the reader, or make someone laugh, is on the lower righthand corner - the very last panel - so as you turn the page, the payoff is in the upper lefthand panel. To pace every story so that there's a setup and a payoff at the page turn was a huge challenge; it's a part of the medium and you really have to learn what can be done in the medium.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Laughing #Challenges #Pages

If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Love #Broken Heart #Herpes

I'm really glad that I made a lot of mistakes, poorly chose my friends throughout my twenties, and didn't have a rocket trajectory that set me on one path without making any mistakes or having any setbacks. The older I get, the more I realize that it's all of these failed, horrible things from my past, and the stories that they generated, that are the things I will draw on for the rest of my life.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Mistake #Past #Rockets

All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Life #Optimistic #Bored

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Inspirational #Change #Dream

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

#Age #Remember

To some of us, the nights are too long. To some, the days.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Night #Long

There will always be an underground.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

If you flee from the things you fear, there's no resolution.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Resolution

The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Mom #Son #Mistress

I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Home #Breathing #Funeral

What we don't understand we can make mean anything.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Mean #Acceptance #Judgment

Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring ***** and proud of it.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Love Is #Rocks #Bullshit

Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Inspirational #Fear #Taking Action

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Perspective #Perception #Looks

Masochism is a valuable job skill.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Jobs #Skills #Valuable

I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Writing #Addiction #Literature

If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Different #Wake Up #Literature

Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Mistake #Trying #Birth

People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Love #Success #People

I just don't want to die without a few scars.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Want #Scar #Wanting To Die

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.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Scare #Want #What You Want

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Journey #People #Steps

When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Hate

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Friday #Sunday #Weekend

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I am Jack's Broken Heart.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Heart #Broken #Surprise

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

#Ignorance #World #Easier

some 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 Palahniuk

#Fake People #Real #Opera

The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing and so she won't commit to anything.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Girl #Confused #Waste

Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Real #Stupid #Discovery

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are…Or we can decide for ourselves.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#World #Who We Are

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

#Life #Giving Up #Past

The things you used to own, now they own you.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Used

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Special #Trash #Crap

I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Taken #Fate #Knowing

Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Today #Sun #Come Up

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

#Expectations #Heaven #Earth

We thought all this teaching was to make us smart. What it did was make us stupid. With all the little facts we learned, we never had the time to think.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Smart #Stupid #Teaching

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.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Stars #Believe #Rocks

You're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Ideas

I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, 'Why?' Why did I cause so much pain? Didnt I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, 'No, that's not right.' Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Death #Pain #Wall

If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. If you do that, you can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Grateful #Thinking #People

The answer is there is no answer.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Life #Answers

We'll never be as young as we are tonight.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Inspiring #Travel #Tonight

The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Law #Boredom #Atheism

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Writing #Retrospect

What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Love #Dream #I Hate You

The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#People #Immigration #Truth Is

Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.
-- Chuck Palahniuk

#Fall #Hey #Destruction