Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

Could you hold the chainsaw a bit closer to your mouth, please?

~ Chuck Palahniuk

I still love him so much I'll hide any amount of conjugated estrogen in his food. So much I'll do anything to destroy him.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

This is your life, and its ending one minute at a time.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

You think maybe if you just work harder and faster, you can hold off the chaos, but then one day you’re changing a patio light bulb with a five-year life span and you realize how you’ll only be changing this light maybe ten more times before you’ll be dead.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

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

~ Chuck Palahniuk

You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Maybe the truth is I really want to like you instead.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Because supposedly those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

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

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up. The shortcut to closing a door is to bury yourself in the details. This is how we must look to God. As if everything's just fine.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate. Let Big Brother do the singing and dancing for you. Be a reporter. Be a good witness. A grateful member of theaudience.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Parents are like God because you wanna know they're out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by 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

If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. 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, but now they call this free will.At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren’t. Where they fail, you have to go all the way. Be what people are too afraid to be. Become whom they admire. People shopping for a messiah want quality. Nobody is going to follow a loser. When it comes to choosing a savior, they won't settle for just a human being.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

I am the child of a lunatic. Not a child of God.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

It sounds as if you'd like to be God.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

If you're male, and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

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

The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Our purest form of joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

I don't want to die without any scars.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?

~ Chuck Palahniuk

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

~ Chuck Palahniuk

It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room masturbating and making money.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

There's still a thousand places I haven't gone to die.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

The lucky ones are just born dead.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

The amazing miracle of death, when one second you're walking and talking, and the next second you're an object.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Someday you will die, and until you know that, you're useless to me.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Believe in me and you shall die, forever.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

The shortest distance between two points is a time line, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life.Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

If she was going to die, Marla didn't want to know about it.

~ Chuck Palahniuk