Chuck Palahniuk

"My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers."

"Jack Palance was my distant uncle - that's the family gossip. Growing up, my family knew everything about his face getting burned and scarred in the military and how that mutilation led him to become such a famous 'heavy' in films. I prayed for good scars of my own. Not just acne scars."

"We don't see a lot of models for male social interaction. There's sports and barn raisings."

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

"In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then people not having socially appropriate responses, having people denying the drama by failing to react to it, and that's a really classic form of humor."

"You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real."

"He was the kind of boy any young girl should date while she's still able to recover."

"“Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.”"

"All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired."

"“Reality means you live until you die...the real truth is nobody wants reality.”"

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

"“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?”"

"“A girl calls and asks, Does it hurt very much to die?Well, sweetheart, I tell her, yes, but it hurts a lot more to keep living.”"

"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."

"“Nothing drives people crazier than seeing someone have a good fucking life.”"

"“Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will. At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.”"

"“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the 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, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very very pissed off.”"

"This is your life and its ending one moment at a time."

"What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher."

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