Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can.

My parents used to fight a lot, and I think they fought a lot at night, and they would turn the television up to hide the sound of their fighting.

My publisher's been shipping me to comic-cons, and it seems that my readership overlaps perfectly with the comic-con crowd.

Any 'artist' makes a living by expressing what others can't - because they're unaware of their feelings, they're too afraid to express those feelings, or they lack the skills to communicate and be understood.

I know that I'm going to die and that you're going to die. I can't do anything about that. But I can explore it through a metaphor and make a kind of funny, dark story about it, and in doing so, really exhaust and research as many aspects of it as I can imagine. And in a way, that does give me some closure.

I'm always trying to reach a transcendent point, a romantic point, but reach it in a really unconventional way, a really profane way. To get to that romantic, touching, heartbreaking place, but through a lot of acts of profanity.

Nobody's told me anything to date that I've been completely reviled by.

In 'Diary,' the motto really is: 'Where Do You Get Your Inspiration?' It coaches us to be aware of our motives and not just be a reaction to the circumstances around us.

I think, in a way, I invented the term 'fight club' and that these things have always existed, but they never really had a label. Nobody had a language to apply to them. I created that language in two words and I've been paid a great deal of money for inventing two words and labeling something that has always been around.

Masochism is a valuable job skill.

The best thing about getting a flu shot is that you never again need to wash your hands. That's how I see it.

Destruction is always an attractive idea. My brother and I used to spend weeks making models of cities so that we could destroy them in 15 minutes. There's a fantastic joy in destroying something that you've meticulously built. Then you're free to build a new thing. Destruction and creation... they're inseparable.

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

Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.

If there had been zombies on the iceberg when the Titanic hit it, that would have made a much better movie.

I come from generations of farmers.

Movie brawls tend to be bloodless and quick.

So many of our enormous emotional crises are lived through the media. They're lived through movies; they're lived through what we watch on television - they're not actual events in our life.

I try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.

My goal is never to make fun of religion.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

If you don't believe what other people believe, then they'll accuse you of being nihilistic.

The bright future is that readers are accepting more varied forms of stories.

My books are all fantastically sentimental.

If nothing else, there's comfort in recognising that no matter how much we fail and sin, death will limit our suffering.

I've always been very curious about fringe cultures where people temporarily adopt a different social model or way of presenting themselves.

Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished.

My characters tend to be more dynamic because they're reaching that point in their lives where their old way of being is breaking down. They're conflicted by the idea that they don't know what's next. You could call it Kierkegaard's leap of faith, when you get tired of sort of reinventing yourself on a very superficial level.

My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their world in a different way.

Every woman is just a different kind of problem.

People have to deal with their issues together; they have to expose themselves and kind of exhaust themselves.

It's funny how you never think about the women you've had. It's always the ones who get away that you can't forget.

When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?

Think about George Orwell's three-minute hate from the novel '1984' and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled and boring, perhaps we do need some sort of short-term violent chaos incorporated into them, to make them more palatable.

Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, 'Chuck, you do this really well. And this is much better than setting fires, so keep it up.' That made me a writer.

When I first read the story 'Guts' in workshop - my fellow writers that I've been meeting with for almost 20 years - they laughed; they didn't have any kind of shock reaction.

David Fincher is a genius.

I don't think 'Guts' could get financed as a movie.

Writing gave me the world.

While writing, I tend to repeat the same song, endlessly, for thousands of times. This helps me ignore any lyrics, and helps create a consistent mood for each book.

We don't have friends, so we watch 'Friends' on TV.

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

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

Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it.

Every author has to eventually write a food book.

Portland is quickly becoming one of those lovely, lush Third World countries where kinda-rich people retire with their money.

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

Reality means you live until you die. The real truth is nobody wants reality.

I love the power of words - no music or special effects - and I want to demonstrate that power.

Any real belief in death is just wishful thinking.