β
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I don't want to die without any scars.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
β
β
Jack London
β
History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club.
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John W. Campbell Jr.
β
This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
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β
Groucho Marx (Groucho and Me)
β
You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
The things you used to own, now they own you.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?
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β
David Baldacci (The Camel Club (The Camel Club, #1))
β
We've all been raised on 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.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.
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β
Jack London
β
You are speaking of my future lover. Be more respectful.
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Charlaine Harris (Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #3))
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I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
It's not love or anything, but I think I like you, too.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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My heart only ever had one thought, one want. One need. Despite all, in spite of all...All my heart has ever wanted is you.
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Stephanie Laurens (The Edge of Desire (Bastion Club, #7))
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I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I am Jack's Broken Heart.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
donβt let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you canβt beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
β
β
Charles Bukowski (Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories)
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We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.
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β
Jostein Gaarder (The Solitaire Mystery)
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I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing and so she won't commit to anything.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Karma comes after everyone eventually. You can't get away with screwing people over your whole life, I don't care who you are. What goes around comes around. That's how it works. Sooner or later the universe will serve you the revenge that you deserve.
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Jessica Brody (The Karma Club)
β
On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.
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Jane Austen (Persuasion)
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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.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Admit it. You arenβt like them. Youβre not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the βnormal peopleβ as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like βHave a nice dayβ and βWeatherβs awful today, eh?β, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like βTell me something that makes you cryβ or βWhat do you think deja vu is for?β. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the othersβ¦
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β
Timothy Leary
β
You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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If you could be either Godβs worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
The sweetest part of being a couple is sharing your life with someone else.
But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share.
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Charlaine Harris (Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #3))
β
Doesn't miss many meals, does he?" Zeus muttered. "Tyson, for your bravery in the war, and for leading the Cyclopes, you are appointed a general I. The armies of Olympus. You shall henceforth lead you breathren into war whenever required by the gods. And you shall have a new...um...what kind of weapon would you like? A sword? An axe?"
"Stick!" Tyson said, showing his broken club.
"Very well," Zeus said. "We will grant you a new, er, stick. The best stick that may be found."
"Hooray!
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
β
For years now, I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.
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β
Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)
β
Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Iβve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, βWhy?β
Why did I cause so much pain?
Didnβt I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?
Canβt I see how weβre all manifestations of love?
I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but Godβs got this all wrong.
We are not special.
We are not crap or trash, either.
We just are.
We just are, and what happens just happens.
And God says, βNo, thatβs not right.β
Yeah. Well. Whatever. You canβt teach God anything.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, "Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll---then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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β
Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
β
The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. Iβll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fictionβuntil he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define βliteratureβ. The Latin root simply means βlettersβ. Those letters are either deliveredβthey connect with an audienceβor they donβt. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but thatβs because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their booksβand thus what they count as literatureβreally tells you more about them than it does about the book.
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β
Brent Weeks