Quotes By Chuck Palahniuk

I really love idiot, enlightened characters - these characters who fail to engage with the drama of their immediate circumstances; they fail to be reactive and enrolled by drama as it happens around them.

People have to deal with their issues together; they have to expose themselves and kind of exhaust themselves.

Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn't know anything.

Some of the best ideas I get seem to happen when I'm doing mindless manual labor or exercise. I'm not sure how that happens, but it leaves me free for remarkable ideas to occur.

I'm always trying to reach a transcendent point, a romantic point, but reach it in a really unconventional way, a really profane way. To get to that romantic, touching, heartbreaking place, but through a lot of acts of profanity.

There are people out there who will not read books, but somehow they'll read my books.

You can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.

Every time I write something, I think, this is the most offensive thing I will ever write. But no. I always surprise myself.

I try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.

It's funny how you never think about the women you've had. It's always the ones who get away that you can't forget.

I don't know if you ever really feel like you've made it.

There will always be an underground.

Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.

I don't care what they do with my book so long as the flippin check clears.

My goal is more to be remembered. They'll remember this thing and like it in the future. The trick is to stay remembered long enough for that to happen.

I just don't want to die without a few scars.

Sometimes you do something, and you get screwed. Sometimes it's the things you don't do, and you get screwed.

The most boring scenes are the scenes where a character is alone.

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?

As we grow older I always think, why didn't I do more when I was young, why didn't I risk more?

Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?

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

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

The only thing I shy away from is non-consensual violence. I can't write a story where someone is a simple victim because it's boring.

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

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

Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.

Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it.

The answer is there is no answer.

Nobody's told me anything to date that I've been completely reviled by.