Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

The things you own end up owning you.

Your birth is a mistake you’ll spend your whole life trying to correct.

The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage.

It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

Your life is so complicated. It’s like a nested set of boxes within boxes within boxes, each one labeled ‘down payment’ or ‘mortgage’ or ‘student loans’ or ‘car repairs.’

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

People hit hardest by life are the ones who refuse to learn.

Your handwriting. The way you walk. Which china pattern you choose. It’s all giving you away. Everything you do shows your hand.

When you’re alive, you should think about death as little as possible.

You don’t know where the line is until you cross it.

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.

Only through destruction can we truly create.

We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.

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

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

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?

Nobody wants their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.

Maybe if we-save our families, we’ll get some kind of safety. For a lifetime. From terror. Shouldn’t that be the war we-rage against?

We have no control over our lives, and death always comes as a surprise.

Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.

Only through destroying can we create something better.

People don’t want their problems solved. They want their victims righted.

There was no telling what people might find out once they felt safe enough to ask.

You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.

My goal is to make sure we never forget this.

Our culture’s built on display. The biggest display in history. We live in a kingdom of bullshit. A kingdom you’ve lived in for far too long. So don’t rap my choices, man. You chose the consumer life. You wanted it. It happened. And don’t bullshit yourself that you didn’t have choices.

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

Follow your fear.

Your past never matches your memory.

Sometimes you have to burn your whole life down to start a new one.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

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

We’ll sell the whole world to buy time inside a second.

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.

If the circle wasn’t perfectly round, eternity would stick out a point or a jagged edge.

Life is but an endless stream of lies and betrayals.

Freedom from everything releases us to care about one thing.

Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.

The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.

You don’t know a thing about me. I’m nobody.

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.

If all else fails, I could build a bomb and blow shit up.

You’re not unique. You’re not pure. You’re not innocent. You’re in the wilderness, pissing all over yourself.

I’m really happy. Which often looks like crazy.