Chuck Palahniuk, an audacious American novelist, challenges literary conventions with his provocative and darkly humorous works, including "Fight Club" and "Choke," which explore themes of alienation and societal disillusionment with raw honesty and visceral intensity, captivating readers with his unique voice and uncompromising vision.
"Scratching Yogi's ears Michelle says 'That's just part of his job, the comforting. That's what I mean by the bhatisvata. That he's more concerned with comforting and helping, even more than his own well-being." This is a trait that more "people" should encompass."
"Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people."
"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."
"No, Miss Wright didn't want to meet her kid. To her, that relationship was just as important, just as ideal and impossible as it would be to the child. She'd expect that young man to be perfect, smart, and talented, everything to compensate for all the mistakes that she'd made. The whole wasted, unhappy mess of her life."
"The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend."
"No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.This is all practice."
"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."
"What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher."
"Prepare to evacuate soul in ten, in nine, eight.Chloe's splashing through the ankle-deep back-up of renal fluid from her failed kidneys.Death will commence in five.Five, four.Around her, a parasitic life spray paints her heart.Four, three.Three, two.Chloe climbs hand-over-hand up the curled lining of her own throat.Death to commence in three, two.Moonlight shines in through the open mout...h.Prepare for the last breath, now.Evacuate.Now.Soul clear of body.Death commences.Now."
"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."
"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?"
"The problem with educating stupid people was that they didn't know they were stupid. The same went for curing crazy people."
"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."
"The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress."
"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."
"When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?"
"I just want one person I can rescue and I want one person who needs me. Who can't live without me. I want to be a hero, but not just one time."
"The religious school she went to, growing up, Ms. Wright said how all the girls had to wear a scarf tied to cover their ears at all times. Based on the biblical idea that the Virgin Mary became pregnant when the Holy Spirit whispered in her ear. The idea that ears were vaginas. That, hearing just one wrong idea, you lost your innocence. One detail too many and you'd be ruined. Overdosed on information."