Chuck Palahniuk

The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.

Chuck Palahniuk

I don’t want to die without any scars.

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

I know that I'm going to die and that you're going to die. I can't do anything about that. But I can explore it through a metaphor and make a kind of funny, dark story about it, and in doing so, really exhaust and research as many aspects of it as I can imagine. And in a way, that does give me some closure.

Chuck Palahniuk

If you flee from the things you fear, there's no resolution.

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

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.

Chuck Palahniuk

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.

Chuck Palahniuk

Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying?

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.

Chuck Palahniuk

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.

Chuck Palahniuk

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.

Chuck Palahniuk

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?

Chuck Palahniuk

Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished.

Chuck Palahniuk

Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.

Chuck Palahniuk

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?

Chuck Palahniuk

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.

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

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.

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.

Chuck Palahniuk

I believe in something. But I don't believe that anything can hold a grudge for long enough to condemn its creation to eternal punishment. Nobody can hold a grudge that long, even God.

Chuck Palahniuk

Maybe it's our sins that give God consolation when he finally has to give us cancer.

Chuck Palahniuk

I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

I think, in a way, I invented the term 'fight club' and that these things have always existed, but they never really had a label. Nobody had a language to apply to them. I created that language in two words and I've been paid a great deal of money for inventing two words and labeling something that has always been around.

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

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

Chuck Palahniuk

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.

Chuck Palahniuk

If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.

Chuck Palahniuk