Chuck Palahniuk quotes - page 21

Some stories, Mr. Whitter would say, you tell them and you use them up. Other stories, they use you up. p288. (Chuck Palahniuk)
Her dress, swimsuit-tight, leotard-tight, her pantyhose run with women pedaling bicycles going nowhere at a thousand calories an hour. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
These people so scared of silence. These are my neighbors. These sound-oholics. These quiet-ophobics. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
I love being with people. But I need a script, a role, something that will help me overcome my fears of rejection and shame. Most religions and belief systems provide a blueprint for some sort of community. And the religion's leaders model a way of being. For example, in my book Choke, a character enacts his own death and resurrection every night – as does the narrator in Fight Club. Here's Jesus, allowing himself to look terrible in front of his peers. That's the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy them, but now they call this free will. At least the Greeks were being honest. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
Down through the ceiling comes a fire siren and people screaming that we're supposed to ignore. The gunshots and tires squeeling, sounds wee have to pretend are okay. They don't mean anything. It's just television. An explosion vibrates down from the upstairs. A woman begs someone not to rape her. It's not real. It's just a movie. We're the culture that cried wolf. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
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. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
Maybe this is why so many serial killers work in pairs. It's nice not to feel alone in a world full of victims or enemies. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
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. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
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. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
The more people die, the more things stay the same. (Chuck Palahniuk)
I lost my virginity through my ear. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
Imagine the books burning. And tapes and films and files, radios and televisions, will all go into that same bonfire. All those libraries and bookstores blazing away in the night. People will attack microwave relay stations. People with axes will chop every fiber-optic cable. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
"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. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
Until you deal with your real personal issues, you'll never be able to control yourself. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
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. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
No detail is too minor to note. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
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.”. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
All my friends with PalmPilots and cell phones, they're always calling themselves and leaving reminders to themselves about what's about to happen. We leave Post-it notes for ourselves. We go to that shop in the mall, the one where they engrave whatever shit you want on a silver-plated box or a fountain pen, and we get a reminder for every special event that life goes by too fast for us to remember. We buy those picture frames where you record a message on a sound chip. We videotape everything! Oh, and now there's those digital cameras, so we can all email around our photos - this century's equivalent of the boring vacation slide show. We organize and reorganize. We record and archive. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
All I do is track a profane route to something (I hope) profound. Like swimming a river of shit for a kiss. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
When you think about it from a native plant perspective," Oyster says."Johnny Apple seed was a fucking biological terrorist. (Chuck Palahniuk)
Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
Sometimes you do something, and you get screwed. Sometimes it's the things you don't do, and you get screwed. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
I think they've always gone on. I've gotten some irate letters from oldsters saying "We did this in the 1930s. You didn't invent anything." And I'm like, "Gramps, you should have put a name on it and sold it, because that's all I did." View quote
Chuck Palahniuk