Quotes by Chuck Palahniuk

“What I did was pour out about a gallon of Chanel Number Five and put a burning wedding invitation to it, and boom, Im recycling.”

“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.”

“The truth is, wherever you choose to be, its the wrong place.”

“Sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold.”

“Thats what I love about fire, how it would kill me as quick as anybody else. How it cant know Im its mother. Its so beautiful and powerful and beyond feeling anything for anybody, thats what I love about fire.”

“You spend your entire life becoming God and then you die.”

“Everyone belongs to everyone else.”

“If you could be either Gods worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?”

“Theres an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. Its when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”

“The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.”

“I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. Thats the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.”

“Deliver me from Swedish furniture.Deliver me from clever art......May I never be complete.May I never be content.May I never be perfect.”

“I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.”

““Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.””

“Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.”

“Besides, at some point, your memories, your stories and adventures, will be the only things you have left.”

“People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become. With the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and addressed and recorded. Nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. On a roller coaster. At a movie. Still, it would always be that kind of faux excitement because theres no possibility of real disaster, real risk, were left with no chance for real salvation. Real elation. Real excitement. Joy. Discovery. Invention.”

“If you can change the way people think, the way they see themselves, the way they see the world. If you can do that, you can change the way people live their lives. And thats the only lasting thing you can create.”

“Language was just our way to explain away the wonder and the glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. People cant deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it cant be explained and understood. We dont live in the real world anymore, we live in a world of symbols.”

“There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world youve tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction.”