Chuck Palahniuk quotes

“Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn't know anything.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Every time I write something, I think, this is the most offensive thing I will ever write. But no. I always surprise myself.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“As we grow older I always think, why didn't I do more when I was young, why didn't I risk more?”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I believe in something. But I don't believe that anything can hold a grudge for long enough to condemn its creation to eternal punishment. Nobody can hold a grudge that long, even God.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I think America is just so in love with conflict.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I think, in a way, I invented the term 'fight club' and that these things have always existed, but they never really had a label. Nobody had a language to apply to them. I created that language in two words and I've been paid a great deal of money for inventing two words and labeling something that has always been around.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Maybe it's our sins that give God consolation when he finally has to give us cancer.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“There's a moment in every book when the book turns and it surprises me.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“You realize you have no control over how you're perceived.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Emotionally, in our minds, we get so filled with resentments where we've got a story about absolutely everything.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I don't care what they do with my book so long as the flippin check clears.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I don't do much more than organise other people's ideas and insights and thoughts, and sort of harvest them, and inventory them and present them.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I don't know if you ever really feel like you've made it.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I have a lot of money.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I haven't shoplifted since I was 13.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I take a lot of flak from the counter-establishment for selling out.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I will never write a sequel to anything that I will ever write.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“I'm only confrontational with my friends.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“If you take my stuff apart, you'll find my choruses of repetitions are picked up almost verbatim from Kurt Vonnegut, and my distanced fracture quality is all from Amy Hempel, who's probably my favourite writer.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“It seems that so much writing is being done in the nineteenth-century model, where every connection has to be thoroughly explained.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“It takes a lot to get people talking in airplanes. But once they start talking, you just can't shut them up.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“My goal is more to be remembered. They'll remember this thing and like it in the future. The trick is to stay remembered long enough for that to happen.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Nobody's told me anything to date that I've been completely reviled by.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“People would ask me to autograph their bodies and then the next time I'd see them on tour they'd have my autograph tattooed. I decided I wouldn't write on people anymore, but I'd give them arms and legs and if they wanted those autographed I'd do that.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Some of the best ideas I get seem to happen when I'm doing mindless manual labor or exercise. I'm not sure how that happens, but it leaves me free for remarkable ideas to occur.”

— Chuck Palahniuk