Quotes by 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. Dont participate.”

“The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. stone crumbles. wood rots. people, well, they die. but things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.”

“Your heart is my piñata.”

“Your birth is a mistake youll spend your whole life trying to correct.”

“People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.”

“Just remember, the same as a spectacular Vogue magazine, remember that no matter how close you follow the jumps: Continued on page whatever. No matter how careful you are, theres going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didnt experience it all. Theres that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you shouldve been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. Thats how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. Were just warming up.”

“Its because were so trapped in our culture, in the being of being human on this planet with the brains we have, and the same two arms and legs everybody has. Were so trapped that any way we could imagine to escape would be just another part of the trap. Anything we want, were trained to want.”

“We all die. The goal isnt to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”

“Love me, Ill be anyobdy you want me to be. Use me. Change me. I can be thin with big breasts and big hair. Take me apart. Make me into anything, but just love me.”

“Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a computer disk. Burning a book. Probably that goes for killing anybody in the world. Were all such products.”

“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. Thats the earth. Why it goes around. Were the rocks. And what happens to us- the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse- why, thats just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.”

“Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. Well be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”

“You ever wonder if Adam and Eve were just the puppies God dumped because they wouldnt house-train?”

“If you love something, set it free. Just dont be surprised if it comes back with herpes...”

“Were landscaping the whole world one stupid mistake at a time.”

“Every generation wants to be the last.”

“Either a species learns to control its own population, or something like disease, famine, war, will take care of the issue.”

“When you think about it....Johnny Appleseed is a fucking biological terrorist. Johnny Appleseed might as well be handing out smallpox.”

“Recycling and speed limits are bullshit, theyre like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.”

“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.”