Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

383 Sourced Quotes

I was tired and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a plane, I wanted the plane to crash. I envied people dying of cancer. I hated my life. I was tired and bored with my job and my furniture, and I couldn't see any way to change things. Only end them.

Chuck Palahniuk
The problem with educating stupid people was that they didn't know they were stupid. The same went for curing crazy people.

Chuck Palahniuk
Jump way back to one time, Evie and me did this fashion shoot in a junk yard, in a slaughterhouse, in a mortuary. We'd go anywhere to look good by comparison, and what I realize is mostly what I hate about Evie is the fact that she's so vain and stupid and needy. But what I hate most is how she's just like me. What I really hate is me so I hate pretty much everybody.

Chuck Palahniuk
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.

Chuck Palahniuk
Some little part of themselves for someone in the future to discover. Maybe a thought. We were here. We built this. A reminder.

Chuck Palahniuk
Just for the record, she still loves you. She wouldn't bother to torture you if she didn't.

Chuck Palahniuk
The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul.

Chuck Palahniuk
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 you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction.

Chuck Palahniuk
Unless we have that moment of chaos, followed by the emotional release of realization, nothing will be remembered.

Chuck Palahniuk
You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.

Chuck Palahniuk
Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history's in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.

Chuck Palahniuk
Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

Chuck Palahniuk
Being tired isn't the same as being rich, but most times it's close enough.

Chuck Palahniuk
They should let some people into the library by prescription only

Chuck Palahniuk
Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will. At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.

Chuck Palahniuk
Because nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.

Chuck Palahniuk
The evil queen was stupid to play Snow White's game. There's an age where a woman has to move on to another kind of power. Money, for example. Or a gun.

Chuck Palahniuk
The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger.

Chuck Palahniuk
Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it was all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple.

Chuck Palahniuk
According to Plato, we don't learn anything. Our soul has lived so many lives that we know everything. Teachers and education can only remind us of what we already know.

Chuck Palahniuk
Griping isn't the same as creating something. Rebelling isn't rebuilding. Ridiculing isn't replacing. We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.

Chuck Palahniuk
Your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.

Chuck Palahniuk
Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

Chuck Palahniuk
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 adressed and recorded. Nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. [...] The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.

Chuck Palahniuk
It's because we're so trapped in our culture, in the being of being human on this planet with the brains we have, and the same two arms and legs everybody has. We're so trapped that any way we could imagine to escape would be just another part of the trap. Anything we want, we're trained to want.

Chuck Palahniuk
A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world.

Chuck Palahniuk
This wasn't any mere song and dance; here was a bold, blaring declaration howling itself into the empty face of death.

Chuck Palahniuk
The feeling is less like an ending than just another starting point.

Chuck Palahniuk
Here are the shadows left behind by a thousand moments, a thousand moods, of needs traced here on the wall by men who are gone. Here is the record of their being here.

Chuck Palahniuk
Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed.

Chuck Palahniuk