We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.
Chuck Palahniuk
Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it.
The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it, because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles, wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.
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?
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.
Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.
Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.
If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.
The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.
The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.
If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?
We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.
Sometimes you do something, and you get screwed. Sometimes it's the things you don't do, and you get screwed.
I just don't want to die without a few scars.
I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.
The answer is there is no answer.
You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.
What we don't understand we can make mean anything.
A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
The first step to eternal life is you have to die.
People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.
If you flee from the things you fear, there's no resolution.
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.
Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.
People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messed cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.
What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises.
That saying, about how you always kill the thing you love, well, it works both ways.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.
Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?
People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.
I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.
You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.
I come from generations of farmers.
To merely observe your culture without contributing to it seems very close to existing as a ghost.
Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying?
Every woman is just a different kind of problem.
No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.
Only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.
I have a lot of fans who are in the prison system, where ramen noodles are a kind of staple. Prisoners are always sending me recipes.
I used to work as a volunteer in a hospice, but I don't have any nursing skills or cooking skills or anything, so I was what they call an escort. I would take people to the support groups every night, and I would have to sit sort of on the sidelines so I could take them back to hospice at the end of the meeting.
Masochism is a valuable job skill.
My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly - all these make for great stories.
One thing I really envy about my friends who have kids is that as their children develop, they're able to revisit their own developmental stages and recognise themselves and undo a lot of things they decided.
I get a lot of letters from women who insist that 'Fight Club' is not just a guy thing. They insist that women have the same rage and need the same outlet.
