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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
My publisher's been shipping me to comic-cons, and it seems that my readership overlaps perfectly with the comic-con crowd.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
The best thing about getting a flu shot is that you never again need to wash your hands. That's how I see it.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
If there had been zombies on the iceberg when the Titanic hit it, that would have made a much better movie.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
If you don't believe what other people believe, then they'll accuse you of being nihilistic.
Chuck Palahniuk
If nothing else, there's comfort in recognising that no matter how much we fail and sin, death will limit our suffering.
Chuck Palahniuk
I've always been very curious about fringe cultures where people temporarily adopt a different social model or way of presenting themselves.
Chuck Palahniuk
Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their world in a different way.
Chuck Palahniuk
People have to deal with their issues together; they have to expose themselves and kind of exhaust themselves.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
Chuck Palahniuk
We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.
Chuck Palahniuk
Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it.
Chuck Palahniuk
Portland is quickly becoming one of those lovely, lush Third World countries where kinda-rich people retire with their money.
Chuck Palahniuk
Discovering the 'impossible' ending to a new book makes me sick with joy and relief.
Chuck Palahniuk