Survivor Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.

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.

The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.

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

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.

People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.

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.

It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.

Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine.

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables.

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.

The joke is, we all have the same punchline.

You realize that people take drugs because it's the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world. It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot?

Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.

and i can't stand the idea of being alone. i can't bear the thought of being free.

Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.

My whole life is about forgetting. It's my most valuable job skill.

This is passive-aggression in action.

Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

The problem in this case was you can't be a middle-aged virgin in America without something being wrong with you. People can't conceive of a virtue in someone else that they can't conceive in themselves. Instead of believing you're stronger, it's so much easier to imagine you're weaker.

To stand here and try to fix her life is just a big waste of time. People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messed cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.

Because tanning and steroids are only a problem if you plan to live a long time.

Imagine how you’d feel if your whole life turned into a job you couldn’t stand.

The police are asking through the bedroom door, why did I make a batch of strawberry daiquiris before I called them? Because we were out of raspberries. Because, can't they see, it just does not matter. Time was not of the essence.

Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it. How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages. ... The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.

Today is just one of those days the sun comes out to really humiliate you.

On a night without moon or stars you can't see a thing, but you can imagine anything.

You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble.

These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful.

Here are the shadows left behind by a thousand moments, a thousand moods, of needs traced here on the wall by men who are gone. Here is the record of their being here.

You realize that there's no point in doing anything if nobody's watching. You wonder, if there had been a low turnout at the crucifixion, would they have rescheduled?

No matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.

this is the upside of already being eternally damned

So here I am. This is as good as it gets. Take it or leave it.

Inside me is the same desperate hope I have watching the ravenous dead and thinking, Oh please, oh please, oh please. The craving inside of me is to be clutched at by some dead girl. To put my ear to her chest and hear nothing. Even getting munched on by zombies beats the idea that I'm only flesh and blood, skin and bone. Demon or angel or evil spirit, I just need something to show itself. Ghoulie or ghosty or long-legged beastie, I just want my hand held.

Her voice makes me think of her mouth makes me think of her breath makes me think of her breasts.

Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren’t. Where they fail, you have to go all the way. Be what people are too afraid to be. Become whom they admire. People shopping for a messiah want quality. Nobody is going to follow a loser. When it comes to choosing a savior, they won't settle for just a human being.

What you forget when you're planning a hijack by yourself is somewhere along the line, you might need to neglect your hostages just long enough so you can use the bathroom.

The bad news is we don't have any control. The good news is we can't make any mistakes.

We opened our hearts. Hear me, heal me, save me, believe me.

The whole world is a disaster waiting to happen.

The world can be a lot bet­ter than we set­tle for. All you have to do is ask.

You think maybe if you just work harder and faster, you can hold off the chaos, but then one day you’re changing a patio light bulb with a five-year life span and you realize how you’ll only be changing this light maybe ten more times before you’ll be dead.

If I turn up suicided in the morning, it was murder.

Our way of get­ting nos­tal­gic for what we just threw in the trash, it’s all be­cause we’re afraid to evolve. Grow, change, lose weight, rein­vent our­selves. Adapt.

The on­ly thing I know is ev­ery­thing you love will die.

Don’t ask me when be­cause I don’t re­mem­ber, but some­where along the way I keep for­get­ting to com­mit sui­cide.

Ev­ery­thing you re­mem­ber is wrong.

There’s al­ways the chance you could die right in the mid­dle of your life sto­ry.

This is fish number six hundred and forty-one in a lifetime of goldfish. My parents bought me the first one to teach me about loving and caring for another living breathing creature of God. Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.

Suicide is very contagious.

Condoms ribbed for extrasensitivity. The last thing I need is extrasensitivity. Here are condoms lined with a topical anesthetic for prolonged action. What a paradox. You don't feel a thing, but you can fuck for hours. This seems to really miss the point. I want my whole life lined with a topical anesthetic.

No mat­ter how much I try and hide this, bit by bit, I start to fall apart.

With my eyes closed, I ask if she knows how this will all turn out. "Long-term or short-term?" she asks. Both. "Long-term," she says, "we're all going to die. Then our bodies will rot. No surprise there. Short-term, we're going to live happily ever after." Really? "Really," she says. "So don't sweat it.

This is some­thing I’ll go to Hell for.

What we call chaos is just pat­terns we haven’t rec­og­nized. What we call ran­dom is just pat­terns we can’t de­ci­pher. What we can’t un­der­stand we call non­sense. What we can’t read we call gib­ber­ish.

You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble. So you just walk home.

Part of her doing suicide intervention is my caseworker has to mix me another gin and tonic.

The girls you meet are never very far from their worst-case scenario.

How I feel is cheap and used, dirty and humiliated. Dirty and tricked and thrown away.

Ig­nore how it feels when the on­ly re­al tal­ent you have is for hid­ing the truth.

Since change is con­stant, you won­der if peo­ple crave death be­cause it’s the on­ly way they can get any­thing re­al­ly fin­ished.

Quit try­ing to fix your life. Deal with your one big is­sue.

Because the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.

Right now, me getting killed would be redundant. ... You could stab a knife right through my heart and you'd be too late. ... Right now, getting killed would be a breath of spring.

Here are condoms lined with a topical anesthetic for prolonged action. What a paradox. You don't feel a thing, but you can fuck for hours.

You realize that there's no point in doing anything if nobody's watching.

Where we're at right here is the beginning of the end.

The truth is you can be or­phaned again and again and again. The truth is you will be. And the se­cret is, this will hurt less and less each time un­til you can’t feel a thing.

The worst strat­egy I could pur­sue is self-​im­prove­ment.

The shortest distance between two points is a time line, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life. Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

How she looks is watered-down. How she looks is disappearing. How she looks is erased. "Don't stress", she says. "This is just me not wearing any makeup.

There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead.

A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world.

ابتاع لي أبواي السمكة الأولى لأتعلم أن أحب مخلوقات الله الأخرى وأعتني بها ، وكل ما تعلمته بعد 640 سمكة : هو أن كلّ شيءٍ تحبهُ يموت !

Kill your­self or don’t kill your­self, but stop tor­tur­ing me. I’m try­ing to move on with my life.

If you never have sex you never gain a sense of power. You never gain a voice or an identity of your own. Sex is the act that separates us from our parents. Children from adults. It's by having sex that adolescents first rebel. And if you never have sex, you never grow beyond everything else your parents taught you. If you never break the rule against sex, you won't break any other rule.

A guy's calling to say he's failing algebra II. Just as a point of practice, I say, Kill yourself. A woman calls and says her kids won't behave. Without missing a beat, I tell her, Kill yourself. A man calls to say his car won't start. Kill yourself. A woman calls to ask what time the late movie starts. Kill yourself. She asks, "Isn't this 555-1327? Is this the Moorehouse CinePlex? I say, Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself.

You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble

My goldfish is swimming around all excited inside the fishbowl on the fridge so I reach up and drop a Valium in its water.

Just for the record, how I feel right now is very terrific.

You just don’t know what I’ve been through this past year.

Just some­thing to need you home at night. Some­thing to keep you from liv­ing alone.

Ignore how it feels when the only real talent you have is for hidding the truth. You have a God-given knack for commiting a terrible sin. It's your calling. You have a natural gift for denial. A blessing.

Inside the hole, the red lips say, ”we all grew up with the same television shows. It’s like we all have the same artificial memory implants. We remember almost none of our real childhoods, but we remember everything that happened to sitcom families. We have the same basic goals. We all have the same fears.” The lips say, ”The future is not bright.

The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.

Ignore how it feels when the only real talent you have is for hiding the truth.

Most ev­ery­thing else I know is from the mess­es these peo­ple leave be­hind.

Sure, I want to look like I’m worth the ef­fort. Washed but not ironed. Clean but not pol­ished. Con­fi­dent but hum­ble.

Here in the bath­room with me are ra­zor blades. Here is io­dine to drink. Here are sleep­ing pills to swal­low. You have a choice. Live or die. Ev­ery breath is a choice. Ev­ery minute is a choice. To be or not to be.

Not that I’m crazy or anything, I just want some proof that death isn’t the end. Even if crazed zombies grabbed me in some dark hall one night, even if they tore me apart, at least that wouldn’t be the absolute end. There would be some comfort in that.

You've never seen a crucifix with a Jesus who wasn't almost naked. You've never seen a fat Jesus. Or a Jesus with body hair. Every crucifix you've ever seen, the Jesus could be shirtless and modeling designer jeans or men's cologne.

Fertility says, "Can you relax and just let things happen?" I ask, does she mean, like disasters, like pain, like misery? Can I just let all that happen? "And Joy," she says, "and Serenity, and Happiness, and Contentment." She says all the wings of the Columbia Memorial Mausoleum. "You don't have to control everything," she says. "You can't control everything." But you can be ready for disaster. A sign goes by saying, Buckle Up. "If you worry about disaster all of the time, that's what you are going to get," Fertility says.

The truth is that all this was just part of the suicide process. Because tanning and steroids are only a problem if you plan to live a long time. Because the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage. If a tress falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn’t it just lie there and rot? And if Christ had died from a barbiturate overdose, alone on the bathroom floor, would He be in Heaven This wasn’t a question of whether I was going to kill myself. This, this effort, this money and time, the writing team, the drugs, the diet, the agent, the flights of stairs going up to nowhere, all this was so I could off myself with everyone’s full attention.

She says, "Do you have any rubbers?" I say, I thought she was barren. "Sure, I'm sterile," she says, "but I've had unprotected sex with a million guys. I could have some terrible fatal disease." I say that would only be a problem if I wanted to live a lot longer. Fertility says, " That's how I feel about my giant credit card debt." So we have sex. If you could call it that.

They want me to account for my next ten years. Their way, everything in your life turns into an item on a list. Something to accomplish. You get to see how your life looks flattened out. The shortest distance between two points is a timeline, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life. Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

The precious gift of life must be preserved no matter now painful and pointless it seemed. Peace, I told them, is a gift so perfect that only God should grant it. I told people, only God’s most selfish children would steal God’s greatest gift, His only gift greater than life. The gift of death. This lesson is to the murderer, I said. This is to the suicide. This is to the abortionist. This is to the suffering and sick. Only God has the right to surprise His children with death.