β
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
β
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I don't want to die without any scars.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
The things you used to own, now they own you.
β
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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.
β
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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
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.
β
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.
β
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.
β
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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.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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.
β
β
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.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.
β
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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?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
It's not love or anything, but I think I like you, too.
β
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.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I am Jack's Broken Heart.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.
β
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.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
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.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
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.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
If you could be either Godβs worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Worker bees can leave.
Even drones can fly away.
The Queen is their slave.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
With insomnia, you're never really awake; but you're never really asleep.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight 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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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
How everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you're proud of will end up as trash.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
One minute was enough, Tyler said, "A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.
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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.
β
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Dean Holder? Messy brown hair? Smoldering blue eyes? A temper straight out of Fight Club?
β
β
Colleen Hoover (Hopeless (Hopeless, #1))
β
Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.
β
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
You know, the condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip it on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night, then you throw it away.
β
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
You have to give up! you have to give up!
You have to realize that someday you will die,
Until you know that, you are useless!
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Iβm breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions, because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I say let me never be complete, I say may I never be content,I say deliver me from Swedish furniture, I say deliver me from clever arts, I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth,I say you have to give up! I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may!
β
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Weβre the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great Warβs a spiritual warβ¦ our Great Depression is our lives. Weβve all been raised on television to believe that one day weβd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we wonβt. And weβre slowly learning that fact. And weβre very, very pissed off.
β
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Only after disaster can we be resurrected.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I'm a toxic waste byproduct of God's creation.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I tiger can smile
A snake will say it loves you
Lies make us evil
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Tyler lies back and asks, "If Marilyn Monroe were alive right now, what would she be doing?"
I say, goodnight.
The headliner hangs down in shreds from the ceiling and Tyler says, "Clawing at the lid of her coffin.
β
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
The first rule of fight club is, you don't talk about fight club.
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Am I sleeping? Have I slept at all? This is insomnia.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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I am Jack's smirking revenge.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Maybe we should always assume the worst.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
What would Tyler Durden do?
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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You always kill the one you love.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
I'll never recover if he breaks my heart. ~Brooke
β
β
Katy Evans (Real (Real, #1))
β
Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Self improvement is masturbation...
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β
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells βstop!β, goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Skinny guys fight till they're burger.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
If Marilyn Monroe was alive right now, what would she be doing?'
Clawing at the roof of her coffin.
β
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.
We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Which is worse: Hell or nothing?
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and nothing can touch you
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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There are a lot of things we don't want to know about the people we love.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it's so cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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This isn't about love as in caring. This is about property as in ownership.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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Being tired isn't the same as being rich, but most times it's close enough.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Hey, you created me! I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone.
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Chuck Palahniuk
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Look up at the stars and you're gone.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Recycling and speed limits are bullshit. They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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I just don't want to die without a few scars.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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I am nothing, and not even that.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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We just had a near-life experience
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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You met me at a very strange time in my life.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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You're not getting this back you know. Consider it an asshole tax.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.
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Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)
β
He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.
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β
Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
β
In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rock feller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
As he filled the mug with coffee, Michael waited for Shane to make some sense. Which Shane finally did, holding up the cheaply printed white flyer. It curled around the edges from where it had been rolled up to fit in the mailbox. βWhat have I always wanted in this town?β he asked.
βA strip club that would let in fifteen year olds?β Michael said.
βWhen I was fifteen. No, seriously, what?β
βGuns βR Us?β
Shane made a harsh buzzer sound. βOkay, to be fair, yeah, thatβs a good alternate answer. But no. I always wanted a place to seriously train to fight, right? Someplace that didn't think aerobics was a martial art? And look!
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Rachel Caine (Bite Club (The Morganville Vampires, #10))
β
This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke, they weren't just telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Kid, when will you learn.β
βYouβd be amazed the things I know.β
βYou might be able thrash your way out of a spider-web, but thrashing in quicksand doesnβt work. The harder you fight, the more ground you lose. Struggling merely expedites your inevitable defeat.β
βNever been defeated. Never will be.β
βRowena was a spider web.β He touches my cheek with the hand holding the knife. The silver glints an inch from my eye. βDo you know what I am.β
βA great big pain in my ass.β
βQuicksand. And youβre dancing on it.β
βDude, whatβs with the knife?β
βIβm not interested in ink anymore. Youβre going to sign my contract in blood.β
βThought you said it was an application,β I say pissily.
βIt is, Dani. To a very exclusive club. Whatβs Mine.β
βAinβt nobodyβs. β
βSign.β
βYou canβtββ
βOr Jo dies. Slowly and painfully.β
βDude, why you still talking? Unchain me and give me the fecking contract already.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Iced (Fever, #6))
β
He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boyβs aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.
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β
Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea)
β
Listen, now, you're going to die, Ray-mond K. K. K. Hessel, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. So lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. I don't give a shit. I have a gun.
Finally, you were listening and coming out of the little tragedy in your head.
Fill in the blank. What does Raymond Hessel want to be when he grows up?
Go home, you said you just wanted to go home, please.
No shit, I said. But after that, how did you want to spend your life? If you could do anything in the world.
Make something up.
You didn't know.
Then you're dead right now, I said. I said, now turn your head.
Death to commence in ten, in nine, in eight.
A vet, you said. You want to be a vet, a veterinarian.
You could be in school working your ass off, Raymond Hessel, or you could be dead. You choose. I stuffed your wallet into the back of your jeans. So you really wanted to be an animal doctor. I took the saltwater muzzle of the gun off one cheek and pressed it against another. Is that what you've always wanted to be, Dr. Raymond K. K. K. K. Hessel, a veterinarian?...
So, I said, go back to school. If you wake up tomorrow morning, you find a way to get back into school.
I have your license.
I know who you are. I know where you live. I'm keeping your license, and I'm going to check on you, mister Raymond K. Hessel. In three months, and then six months, and then a year, and if you aren't back in school on your way to being a veterinarian, you will be dead...
Raymond K. K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you've ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)