Quotes from Chuck Palahniuk

Because tanning and steroids are only a problem if you plan to live a long time.

The money is in television. Books are not the dominant medium of our time, so fewer people will create them. In a sad way, books have become a form of "comfort food" we expect to lull us to sleep.

If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes.

We're making the same mistakes we made 1,000 years ago. So they must be the right ones. So relax.

I'm trying to make order out of chaos, trying to find some way of rationalising the horrific things that people do or the way the world is.

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

For me and my entire generation, we took on this kind of sarcastic, ironic, snarkiness because it seemed the most extreme reaction to the earnestness of hippies.

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.

The damaged love the damaged. True fact.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can't leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.

Some of the best ideas I get seem to happen when I'm doing mindless manual labor or exercise. I'm not sure how that happens, but it leaves me free for remarkable ideas to occur.

If you take my stuff apart, you'll find my choruses of repetitions are picked up almost verbatim from Kurt Vonnegut, and my distanced fracture quality is all from Amy Hempel, who's probably my favourite writer.

My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash any part of the book on the next rewrite.

People would ask me to autograph their bodies and then the next time I'd see them on tour they'd have my autograph tattooed. I decided I wouldn't write on people anymore, but I'd give them arms and legs and if they wanted those autographed I'd do that.

When I first used to tour, guys would come up and say, 'Where's the fight club in my area?' and I would say, 'There isn't one.' And they'd say, 'No, no, you can tell me, you can tell me.'

The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy that pretense.

We'll never be as young as we are tonight.

This isn't about love as in caring. This is about property as in ownership.

Waiters will always pee in soup, people will always fall in love.

It takes a lot to get people talking in airplanes. But once they start talking, you just can't shut them up.

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

For me, writing is a kind of coping mechanism.

My writing process isn't a very organized thing.