Quotes By Chuck Palahniuk

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.

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

You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

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

There will always be an underground.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

The world of American politics is more contentious than it has ever been in my lifetime.

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

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.

The answer is there is no answer.

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

I take a lot of flak from the counter-establishment for selling out.

I think in a way, you're doomed, once you can envision something. You're sort of doomed to make it happen. I've found that the moment I can envision leaving a relationship, that's usually the moment that the relationship starts to fall apart.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

If you take my stuff apart, you'll find my choruses of repetitions are picked up almost verbatim from Kurt Vonnegut, and my distanced fracture quality is all from Amy Hempel, who's probably my favourite writer.

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.