Quotes by Chuck Palahniuk

"If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can."

"If nothing else, there's comfort in recognising that no matter how much we fail and sin, death will limit our suffering."

"Find out what you're afraid of and go live there."

"When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?"

"What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises."

"Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it."

"I'm always trying to reach a transcendent point, a romantic point, but reach it in a really unconventional way, a really profane way. To get to that romantic, touching, heartbreaking place, but through a lot of acts of profanity."

"We're so much more likely to feel sympathy for an animal than another person; thus, the best fiction uses animals to define truly humane behavior."

"My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers."

"Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives."

"Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet."

"My private history in terms of people in my life who are dead is very easy to discuss. I don't feel those people can be threatened or intruded upon now. But I am enormously protective of the people who are currently in my life, my existing friends and family. That is where the curtain is drawn."

"In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then people not having socially appropriate responses, having people denying the drama by failing to react to it, and that's a really classic form of humor."