Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.

You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet.

Only after disaster can we be resurrected.

You are not special. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We’re all part of the same compost heap.

At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.

I don’t want to die without any scars.

The things you used to own, now they own you.

This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.

Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.

Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.

We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact.

If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic.

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

I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.

It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too.

If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?

The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly.

Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.

I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I’d never have.

On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

For years now, I’ve wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.

If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.”

“Because beauty is power the way money is power the way a loaded gun is power.”

“…It helps to know you’re not any more responsible for how you look than a car is. You’re a product just as much. A product of a product of a product...”

“…If I can’t be beautiful, I want to be invisible…”

“Your perception is all f****d up. All you can talk about is trash that’s already happened. You can’t base your life on the past or the present. You have to tell me about your future.”

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.”

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”

“No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That’s how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice.”

“When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves.”

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”

“Parents are like God because you wanna know they’re out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something.”

“Don’t do what you want. Do what you don’t want. Do what you’re trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”

“No matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.”

“We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”

“Most times, it’s just a lot easier not to let the world know what’s wrong.”

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

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

“Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly.”

“Who I was before the accident is just a story now. Everything before now, before now, before now, is just a story I carry around. I guess that would apply to anybody in the world. What I need is a new story about who I am.”