Quotes from Chuck Palahniuk

Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.

That's the best revenge of all: happiness. Nothing drives people crazier than seeing someone having a good fucking laugh.

For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born.

You have to keep recycling yourself.

When we die, these are the stories still on our lips. The stories we'll only tell strangers, someplace private in the padded cell of midnight. These important stories, we rehearse them for years in our head but never tell. These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost.

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.

Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better.

There is nothing special in the world. nothing magic. just physics.

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.

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

Self improvement is masturbation...

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

you're doomed at being you.

The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.

The truth is . . . you think what people want you to think.

That's the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.

At this rate, we'll never get to the future.

Just each of us being me, me, me first. The murderer, the victim, the witness each of us thinks our role is the lead. Probably that goes for anybody in the world.

Most people would never admit it, but they'd been bitching since they were born. As soon as their head popped out into that bright delivery-room light, nothing had been right. Nothing had been as comfortable or felt so good. Just the effort it took to keep your stupid physical body alive, just finding food and cooking it and dishwashing, the keeping warm and bathing and sleeping, the walking and bowel movements and ingrown hairs, it was all getting to be too much work.

Most guys will fight to know you. Some guys will deny you're a real person, and some will just ignore you. The zealot. The atheist. The agnostic.

Anymore, no one's mind is their own.

Skinny guys fight till they're burger.

Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.

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