Quotes from Chuck Palahniuk

My father worked for the railroad, and whenever a train crashed, we would go as a family and steal food from the boxcars. One year we stole a case of butterscotch pudding that was for export to Israel. It took us years to get through.

In truth, the degree of anyone's success depends on how often they can say the word yes and hear the word no.

The truth is you can be orphaned again and again and again. The truth is, you will be. And the secret is, this will hurt less and less each time until you can't feel a thing. Trust me on this.

The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.

Those who remember the past tend to get the story really screwed up.

The on­ly thing I know is ev­ery­thing you love will die.

Love and life belongs to great risk.

Don't do this. I love you. Don't shut me out.

If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.

My books are always about somebody who is taken from aloneness and isolation - often elevated loneliness - to community. It may be a denigrated community that is filthy and poor, but they are not alone; they are with people.

Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

I think my heart always goes out to men at the peak of their celebrity who checked out. There's such an odd, horrible trend in my lifetime for it - Kurt Cobain, David Foster Wallace, Alexander McQueen, Heath Ledger.

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

If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.

I haven't had television since 1991, and it definitely influences me. As a child of the 1970s, I couldn't hold a narrative in my head; I was lucky if I could hold a joke in my head, because every time you turn on television or radio, it wipes the slate clean - at least in my case.

Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.

If it comes down to a choice between being unloved and being vulnerable and sensitive and emotional, then you can just keep your love.

Why should I believe any of this?' It happens that fast. I say, because I think I like you. Marla says, 'Not love?' This is a cheesy enough moment, I say. Don't push it.

All object printed: Love me. Look me. Million speaking objects,begging. Crown American consumer with power of king, to rescue choose and give home or abandon here for expire.

Love is a skill you learn.

You always kill the one you love.

I came to Party Crashing because accidents happen. People you love will die. Nothing you treasure will last forever. And I need to accept and embrace that fact.

If it is the case that love does survive death, then you may consider this to be a happy ending. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Happily ever after or not.