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Chuck Palahniuk

106 quotes

“The journalist researches a story. The novelist imagines it. What’s funny is, you’d be amazed at the amount of time a novelist has to spend with people in order to create this single lonely voice. This seemingly isolated world. It’s hard to call any of my novels “fiction.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To create a race of masters from a race of slaves, Mr. Whittier said, to teach a controlled group of how to create their own lives, Moses had to be an asshole.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What you have to love about drinking is, every swallow is an irrevocable decision. You charging ahead, in control of the game. It's the same with pills, sedatives and painkillers, every swallow is a first definite step down some road.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stink for privacy, the new way to protect personal space. Intimidation by odor.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A journalist has a right... ...and a duty, to destroy the golden calves he helps create.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are permanent, but this life is not," Mr. Whittier would say. "You don't expect to visit an amusement park, then stay forever.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The earth, he'd say, is just a big machine. A big processing plant. A factory. That's your big answer. The big truth. Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That's the earth. Why it goes round. We're the rocks. And what happens to us--the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse--why, that's just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was a kind of tumbler. The same as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. All of us, we're meant to be worn smooth by conflict and pain of every kind. To be polished. There was nothing bad about this. This wasn't suffering. It was erosion. It was just another, a basic, an important step in the refining process.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every apostle or disciple," Mrs. Clarke says, "as much as they're running to follow their savior-they're running just as hard to escape something else.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the rest of history, all over the world, people will be trying to save this same dead woman. This woman who just wanted to die.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't unfuck a kid. Once you fuck a kid, you can't get that genie back in the bottle.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is just what human beings do-turn objects into people, people into objects. Back and forth. Tit for tat.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a fundraiser, our first idea was 'Five Bucks to Punch a Mime.'”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things- they save you." p205”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What matters," Sister Vigilante says, "is, people need a monster they can believe in." A true horrible enemy. A demon to define themselves against. Otherwise, it's just us versus us.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With the angel of death going door to door, people stayed together. They quit bitching and behaved.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I lost my virginity through my ear.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole idea of men creating perfect robot women for their own pleasure, it happens every day. The most "beautiful" women you see in public, none of them are for real. They're just men perpetuating their perverted stereotypes of women. Just the oldest story in the world. There's a penis on every page of Cosmopolitan magazine if you know where to look.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should forgive God...”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chapter 19, Absolution”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That's how a scary story works. It echoes some ancient fear. It recreates some forgotten terror. Something we'd like to think we're grown beyond. But it can still scare us to tears. It's something you'd hoped was healed.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there's a trick to doing a job you hate... Mrs. Clark says it's to find a job you hate even more.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We love drama. We love conflict. We need a devil or we'll create one.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Telling a story is how we digest what happens to us," Mr Whittier says, "It's how we digest our lives. Our experiences.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people. And maybe the reason vampires don’t die is because they can never see themselves in photographs or mirrors." p144”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People fall so in love with their pain, they can't leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some stories, Mr.Whitter would say, you tell them and you use them up. Other stories, they use you up. p288”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some stories, you use up. Others use you up.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people. And maybe the reason vampires don't die is because they can never see themselves in photographs or mirrors.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world will always punish the few people with special talents the rest of us don't recognize as real.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A book is as private and consensual as sex.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Leather shoes and fried chicken and dead soldiers are only a tragedy if you waste their gift sitting in front of the television. Or stuck in traffic. Or stranded at some airport.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That's the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Their teeth white, as if they never used teeth for anything except to smile.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some stories, she'd say, the more you tell them, the faster you use them up. Those kind, the drama burns off, and every version, they sound more silly and flat. The other kind of story, it uses you up. The more you tell it, the stronger it gets. Those kind of stories only remind you how stupid you were. Are. Will always be.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Until you can ignore your circumstances, and just do as you promise," he says, "you'll always be controlled by the world.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You will always have some excuse not to live your life.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her dress, swimsuit-tight, leotard-tight, her pantyhose run with women pedaling bicycles going nowhere at a thousand calories an hour.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first time we meet another person an insidious little voice in our head says, 'I might wear eyeglasses or be chunky around the hips or a girl, but at least I'm not Gay or Black or a Jew.' Meaning: I may be me - but at least I have the good sense not to be YOU.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It simply makes sense that I should miss my parents more than they miss me, especially when you consider that they only loved me for thirteen years while I loved them my entire life.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Hell you'd be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. The same goes for earth.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, and I know that when a supersexy older girl with hips and breasts and nice hair wants to take off your glasses and to paint you a smokey eye she's merely trying to enroll you in a beauty contest she's already won. It's the kind of slummy, condescending gesture, like when rich people ask poor people where they summer. To me, this smacks of a blatant, insensitive 'let them eat cake' type of chauvinism.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the living are haunted by the dead. Then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source