Haunted Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

You're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life.

The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people. And maybe the reason vampires don’t die is because they can never see themselves in photographs or mirrors.

To some of us, the nights are too long. To some, the days.

If we can forgive what’s been done to us . . . If we can forgive what we’ve done to others . . . If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being villains or victims. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.

Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things- they save you.

The world will always punish the few people with special talents the rest of us don’t recognize as real.

A book is as private and consensual as sex.

Some stories, you use up. Others use you up.

The truth is . . . you think what people want you to think.

We're all of us haunted and haunting.

That’s the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.

Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening.

Without animals, there would be no humanity. In a world of just people, people will mean nothing . . .

If we can forgive what has been done to us . . . If we can forgive what we've done to others . . . If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being villians or victims. Only then can we maybe rescue the world. But we still sit here, waiting to be saved. While we're still victims, hoping to be discovered while we suffer.

You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time.

Pretty much always. We need to tell the story of our life to someone.

When we die, these are the stories still on our lips. The stories we’ll only tell strangers, someplace private in the padded cell of midnight. These important stories, we rehearse them for years in our head but never tell. These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost.

The air will always be to filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.

A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to produce a risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book. . . . A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a "mass medium." No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades.

If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.

Kids, she says. When they’re little, they believe everything you tell them about the world. As a mother, you’re the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. But after they hit some magic age, it’s just the opposite. After that, you’re either a liar or a fool or a villain.

Most people would never admit it, but they'd been bitching since they were born. As soon as their head popped out into that bright delivery-room light, nothing had been right. Nothing had been as comfortable or felt so good. Just the effort it took to keep your stupid physical body alive, just finding food and cooking it and dishwashing, the keeping warm and bathing and sleeping, the walking and bowel movements and ingrown hairs, it was all getting to be too much work.

How can you possibly believe he really loves you?” Miss Sneezy looks from the Mother to the Saint to Mr. Whittier’s hand.“You have no choice,” Mr. Whittier tells her. “If you need to be loved.

Our purest form of joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy.

That’s how a scary story works. It echoes some ancient fear. It re-creates some forgotten terror. Something we’d like to think we’ve grown beyond. But it can still scare us to tears. It’s something you’d hoped was healed.

Going to work just looked crazy. Eating another meal, ever, made about as much sense as planting tulip bulbs in the shadow of a falling atom bomb.

We’d turn our lives into a terrible adventure. A true-life horror story with a happy ending. A trial we’d survive to talk about.

I fainted....and you ate my ass? You fed me my own ass?

If there’s any trick to doing a job you hate . . . Mrs. Clark says it’s to find a job you hate even more.

We have pain and hate and love and joy and war in the world because we want them.

As young people we want something to slow us down and keep us trapped in one place long enough to look below the surface of the world. That disaster is a car crash or a war. To make us sit still. It can be getting cancer or getting pregnant. The important part is how it seems to catch us by surprise. That disaster stops us from living the life we'd planned as children - a life of constant dashing around.

In a city this size, every year, hundreds of husbands walk away. Kids leave home. Wives escape. People disappear.

They assume she was once gorgeously beautiful. Because now she looks so—bad.

In light this bright, after so long in the dark, everything we can see is only black and white. Only glaring shape-outlines we have to blink against.

Anything pretty,' Claire will tell you, 'it's only for sale because no one wants it.

An important part of building a new culture was allowing people to complain about their past. At first, the more they complained, the worse the past would seem. But by venting, people could start to resolve the past. By bitching and bitching and bitching, they could exhaust the drama of their own horror stories. Grow bored. Only then could they accept a new story for their lives. Move forward.

Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That’s the earth. Why it goes around. We’re the rocks. And what happens to us—the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse—why, that’s just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.

This would be...a book that would be a trapdoor down into some place dark. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover. Because only books have that power.

We love our pain. We love our drama. But we will never, ever admit that.

As the French say, who doesn't like getting their butt sucked?

As an artist you organize your life so that you get a chance to paint, a window of time, but that's no guarantee you'll create anything worth all your effort. You're always haunt by the idea you're wasting your life.

We are all connected on the inside. Your ass is just the far end of your mouth.

You are permanent, but this life is not.

This is just what human beings do-turn objects into people, people into objects. Back and forth.

What stops you here is what stops your entire life." The air will always be too filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.

With every lecture, you’re forced to look again at every choice you’ve made over the lesson-by-lesson chain of your entire life. And after all these years, you see how little you have to work with, how limited your life and education have been. How scant was your courage and curiosity. Not to mention your expectations.

You’re training a new employee,' says Mrs. Clark, 'to take over your boring old job.' When you raise a child.

A shadow of a reflection of an image of an illusion.

Her mom and dad are both doctors and want her to follow her dream, not turn out the way they have, no matter how much it costs them.

Her haunting me. The way a song stays in your head. The way you think life should be. How anything holds your attention. How your past goes with you into every day of your future.

Our humanity isn't measured by how we treat other people, our humanity is measured by how we treat animals.

Some stories, she’d say, the more you tell them, the faster you use them up. Those kind, the drama burns off, and every version, they sound more silly and flat. The other kind of story, it uses you up. The more you tell it, the stronger it gets. Those kind of stories only remind you how stupid you were. Are. Will always be.

Committing suicide just seemed to be another aggressive plan to fix her life.

People need a monster they can believe in." A true and horrible enemy. A demon to define themselves against. Otherwise, it's just us versus us.

Even if you tell yourself "Today I'm going to drink coffee the wrong way ... from a dirty boot." Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot. Because you can do nothing wrong. You are always right. Even when you say, "I'm such an idiot, I'm so wrong..." you're right. You're right about being wrong. You're right even when you're an idiot. No matter how stupid your idea, you're doomed to be right because it's yours.

She'd lived through something the rest of them could never imagine. So much torture and horror that she didn't need to tell people about it. She'd never need drama or joy or pain ever again.

Cyanide is natural. So is arsenic.

Anonymity is the new fame.

Daytime television, you can tell who’s watching by the three kinds of commercials. Either it’s clinics for drying out drunks. Or it’s law firms who want to settle injury suits. Or it’s schools offering mail-order vocational degrees to make you a bookkeeper. A private detective. Or a locksmith. If you’re watching daytime television, this is your new demographic. You’re a drunk. Or a cripple. Or an idiot.

We fight wars. We fight for peace. We fight hunger. We love to fight. We fight and fight and fight, with our guns or mouths or money. And the planet is never one lick better than it was before us.

To my mind, those who can, do. Those who can't, gripe.

We love drama. We love conflict. We need a devil or we'll create one. None of that is bad. It's just the way human beings operate.

If you love something... Set it free." Just don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes

You digest and absorb your life by turning it into stories,' he says, 'the same way this theater seems to digest people.' With one hand, he points to a carpet stain, this dark stain sticky and growing mold, branched with arms and legs. Other events—the ones you can’t digest—they poison you. Those worst parts of your life, those moments you can’t talk about, they rot you from the inside out. Until you’re Cassandra’s wet shadow on the ground. Sunk in your own yellow protein mud. But the stories that you can digest, that you can tell—you can take control of those past moments. You can shape them, craft them. Master them. And use them to your own good. Those are stories as important as food. Those are stories you can use to make people laugh or cry or sick. Or scared. To make people feel the way you felt. To help exhaust that past moment for them and for you. Until that moment is dead. Consumed. Digested. Absorbed.

As human beings, our first commandment is: Something needs to happen

Screw the idea of inventing monsters. Here, we just had to look around. Pay attention.

Every job too miserable most times, is nothing compared to just waiting.

Your whole life, she says, you're searching for disaster—you're auditioning disasters—so you'll be well rehearsed when the ultimate disaster finally arrives.

I used to think the secret to a happy ending was to bring down the curtain at the exact right time. A moment after happiness, then everything's all wrong, again.

You get a glass tank, put it where the TV used to be, and all you get is a lizard—something so stupid that every time the maid moves a rock the lizard thinks it’s been relocated miles away.

Something or someone lived or died so you could have this life. The mountain of the dead. They left you into the daylight.

At least Anne Frank,” Comrade Snarky said, “never had to tour with her book . . .

As a mother, you're the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together.

The people who really, actually loved us, they'd beg us to go. To fulfill our dreams. Practice our craft. And they would love us when we all came back.

Fare schifo è il nuovo essere splendidi

By bitching and bitching and bitching, they could exhaust the drama of their own horror stories. Grow bored. Only then could they accept a new story for their lives. Move forward.

Still screaming. As if the stars give a shit.

No, we love war. War. Starvation. Plague. They fast-track us to enlightenment. “It's the mark of a very, very young soul,” Mr. Whittier used to say, “to try and fix the world. To try and save anyone from their ration of misery.” We have always loved war. We are born knowing that war is why we're here. And we love disease. Cancer. We love earthquakes. In this amusement-park fun house we call the planet earth, Mr. Whittier says we adore forest fires. Oil spills. Serial killers.

That would be like breaking a mirror for showing you the truth.

You realize it's not wooden stakes that kill vampires. It's all the emotional baggage and letdowns they have to carry around for century after century.

...Because we love our pain. We love our drama. But we will never, ever admit that.

Our all-powerful God got so scared He scattered the human race across the face of the earth, and shattered their language to keep His children apart.

Our purest joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy. The joy you feel when a limousine turns the wrong way down a one-way street.

The air will always be too filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.

In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was a kind of tumbler. The same as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. All of us, we’re meant to be worn smooth by conflict and pain of every kind. To be polished. There was nothing bad about this. This wasn’t suffering, it was erosion.It was just another, a basic, an important step in the refining process.

Really, there is no wrong. Not in our own minds. Our own reality. You can never set off to do the wrong thing. You can never say the wrong thing. In your own mind, you are always right. Every action you take—what you do or say or how you choose to appear—is automatically right the moment you act.

Godless, 'we had no war.' Until God set us to fight each other, for the rest of human history.

I used to think the secret to a happy ending was to bring down the curtain at the exact right time.

Even a killer needs to talk, to tell his life story, so bad he'll come and sit beside a grave or a rotting body and just blab, blab, blab at it for hours. Until he makes sense. Until the killer can convince himself with the story of his new reality. The reality that--he was right.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can't leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves. Some stories,

If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. His words, in His Bible. The Book of Genesis, chapter eleven So our God, our all -powerful God got so scared He scattered the human race across the face of the earth, and shattered their language to heep His children apart. An almighty God this insecure? Who pits his children against each other, to keep them weak. This is the God we’re supposed to worship?

Consider that the earth is a processing plant, a factory. Picture a tumbler used to polish rocks: a rolling drum filled with water and sand. Consider that your soul is dropped in as an ugly rock, some raw mineral or natural resource, crude oil, mineral ore. And all conflict and pain is the abrasive that rubs us, polishes our soul, refines us, teaches and finishes us over lifetime after lifetime.

Cuando nos morimos, esas son las historias que siguen en nuestro labios. Las historias que solamente les contamos a desconocidos, en algún lugar íntimo de la celda acolchada de la medianoche. Esas historias importantes que nos pasamos años ensayando mentalmente pero que nunca contamos. Esas historias son fantasmas, que traen a la gente de vuelta de entre los muertos. Solamente un momento. De visita. Cada historia es un fantasma.

Even a killer needs to talk, to tell his life story, so bad he’ll come and sit beside a grave or a rotting body and just blab, blab, blab at it for hours. Until he makes sense. Until the killer can convince himself with the story of his new reality. The reality that—he was right".

Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That's the earth. Why it does around. We're the rocks. And what happens to us - the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse - why that's just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.

Ciò che vi blocca qui dentro è ciò che blocca l'intera vostra vita". L'aria sarà sempre troppo carica di qualcosa. Il vostro corpo sempre troppo indolenzito o stanco. Vostro padre, sempre troppo ubriaco. Vostra moglie sempre troppo fredda. Avrete sempre una qualche scusa per non vivere la vostra vita.

We should forgive God . . . For making us too short. Fat. Poor. We should forgive God our baldness. Our cystic fibrosis. Our juvenile leukemia. We should forgive God’s indifference, His leaving us behind: Us, God’s forgotten Science Fair project, left to grow mold. God’s goldfish, ignored until we’re forced to eat our own shit off the bottom".

She says, "I'll swear by the rose tattooed on my ass, that old man raped me." Here, the funeral parade stops. At this point, Comrade Snarky is a victim among victims. The rest of us — just her supporting cast. Mrs. Clark, leading us, she looks back and says, "He what?" And from behind his camera, Agent Tattletale says, "Me, too. He raped me first." Saint Gut-Free says, "Well what the hell...He poked me, too." As if poor skinny Saint Gut-Free had enough ass left to poke. And Mrs. Clark says, "This is not funny. Not in the least." "Tough," the Matchmaker tells her. "It's wasn't funny, either, when you raped me." Shaking his ponytail, the Duke of Vandals tells the Matchmaker, "You couldn't pay to get raped.

En la antigua Roma, dice la Hermana Justiciera, en el Coliseo, el "editor" era el hombre que organizaba los deportes sangrientos que eran la forma principal de mantener a la gente pacificada y unida. De ahí es de donde viene realmente la palabra "editor". Hoy día, nuestro editor planea el menú de asesinatos, violaciones, incendios provocados y asaltos que hay en la portada del periódico del día.