Chuck Palahniuk quote: "Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way."

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The bright future is that readers are accepting more varied forms of stories.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Of the big horror movies of the '70s, you have 'The Omen,' 'The Sentinel,' '...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The best thing about getting a flu shot is that you never again need to wash your hands. That's ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My private history in terms of people in my life who are dead is very easy to discuss. I don't f...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens jus...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their w...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Portland in particular is a cheap enough place to live that you can still develop your passion - pai...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scare...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying?
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it, beca...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or aware...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

A film has to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My grandfather was hit over the head by a crane boom in Seattle. Some of the family claimed he was n...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Movie brawls tend to be bloodless and quick.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You decide your own level of involvement.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolis...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The most boring thing in the entire world is nudity. The second most boring thing is honesty.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in a...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run f...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Parents are like God because you wanna know they're out there, and you want them to think well of yo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

For years now, I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Beca...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

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

You know how both life and porno movies end. The only difference is life starts with the orgasm.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

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

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

A menos que todo empeore, nada puede mejorar.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

A girl calls and asks, "Does it hurt very much to die?"
"Well, sweetheart," I tell her, "yes, b...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

On the other side of the handrail, the hallway's gray marble floor looks as if we've climbed a stair...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Love me, I'll be anyobdy you want me to be. Use me. Change me. I can be thin with big breasts and bi...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Maybe this is why so many serial killers work in pairs. It's nice not to feel alone in a world full ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Just remember, the same as a spectacular Vogue magazine, remember that no matter how close you follo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Disaster is a natural part of my evolution. Toward tragedy and dissolution.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If you tell folks you're a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as being a man means looking the w...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teet...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

That old saying, how you always hurt the one you love, well, it works both ways
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

College is like a fountain of knowledge - and the students are there to drink
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You can kill a lifetime without feeling anything but skin.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring asshole and proud of it.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

On a large enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

And maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Only after disaster can we be ressurected.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumpti...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some bline, random disaster, or some sud...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes availa...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Las Vegas looks the way you'd imagine heaven must look at night.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Recycling and speed limits are bullshit. They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Maybe we should always assume the worst.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive....
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The first step to eternal life, is you have to die.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You can't base your life on the past or the present. You have to tell me about your future.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I dread the promotion part of my job. It's agony, especially compared to the private, at-home jo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

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

I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Jack Palance was my distant uncle - that's the family gossip. Growing up, my family knew everyth...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is ou...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I'm always trying to reach a transcendent point, a romantic point, but reach it in a really unco...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

With a book, you're guaranteed the audience has a certain skill level and that the audience has ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If there had been zombies on the iceberg when the Titanic hit it, that would have made a much better...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibili...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We're making the same mistakes we made 1,000 years ago. So they must be the right ones. So relax...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like gr...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My first four books, from 'Fight Club' to 'Choke,' dealt with personal identity issu...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagn...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, 'Chuck, you do this really we...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I know that I'm going to die and that you're going to die. I can't do anything about tha...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Maybe it's better just living the way you figure life is when you're a kid. Before you get too smart...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Real smart begins when you quit quoting other people.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their dis...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I say let me never be complete, I say may I never be content,I say deliver me from Swedish furniture...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You have to give up! you have to give up!
You have to realize that someday you will die,
U...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Big Brother fills us all with the same crap. My guess is he was clever the same way everybody thinks...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Fathers. Mothers. With all their caring and attention. They will f--- you up, every time.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Find good in what the world says is evil.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Make me into anything, but just love me.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Give me lust, baby.
Flash.
Give me malice.
Flash.
Give me detached existentialis...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I thought we were a real love relationship. I did. I was very invested in love, but it was just this...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Fuck me. I'm so tired of being me. Me beautiful. Me ugly. Blonde. Brunette. A million fucking fashio...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Most times, it's just a lot easier not to let the world know what's wrong.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed fee...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Gu...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My father worked for the railroad, and whenever a train crashed, we would go as a family and steal f...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We live and we die and anything else is just a delusion.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it mi...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

People would ask me to autograph their bodies and then the next time I'd see them on tour they&#...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inven...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Every decade, we get a stunning collection of dynamic, heartbreaking short stories. In the past, tho...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Horror stories give us a way of exhausting our emotions around social issues, like a woman's rig...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing,...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

What I did was pour out about a gallon of Chanel Number Five and put a burning wedding invitation to...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

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

Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

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

The idea that population growth guarantees a better life - financially or otherwise - is a myth that...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I tell everyone I interact with what I'm working on and let them bring me anecdotes that illustr...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

'At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom' by Amy Hempel showed me the lean quality of prose.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If you take my stuff apart, you'll find my choruses of repetitions are picked up almost verbatim...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Someday you will die, and until you know that, you're useless to me.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

She's not wearing makeup so her face just looks like skin.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstru...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Sometimes the very best way to deal with unpleasant things is to depict them in ways that allow peop...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a boo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My personal theory is that younger audiences disdain books - not because those readers are dumber th...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

He was the kind of boy any young girl should date while she's still able to recover.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

My secret wish is right now to be romancing this dead girl. A dead girl. Any dead girl. I'm not what...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

One thing I really envy about my friends who have kids is that as their children develop, they'r...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet the...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Tyler and me at the edge of the roof, the gun in my mouth, I'm wondering how clean this gun is.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I try to forget about the expectation that's out there and the audience listening for the next t...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then peop...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The things you used to own, now they own you.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

For me and my entire generation, we took on this kind of sarcastic, ironic, snarkiness because it se...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood ed...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justifie...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Hysteria is only possible with an audience.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have ...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things th...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

With a gun stuck in your mouth and the barrel of the gun between your teeth, you can only talk in vo...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The things you own end up owning you.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depre...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

We just had a near-life experience!
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

This is why I loved the support groups so much. If people thought you were dying, they gave you thei...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If you could be God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Being tired isn't the same as being rich, but most times it's close enough.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfec...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Masochism is a valuable job skill.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Someone bent on suicide won't have much sense of humor left.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Which is worse: Hell or nothing?
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distrac...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sof...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Real discoveries come from chaos.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

The future is just wasted on some people.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You can find fresh pain every time you discover what you pretty much already know.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

If you dont know what you want, you end up with a lot you dont
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Theres always the chance you could die right in the middle of your life story
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Us. God's forgotten Science Fair project, left to grow mold. God's goldfish, ignored until we're for...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

As if you cut open a rag doll with a sill name, and found inside:Real intestines, real lungs, a beat...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

You are not special. Your are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I tell everybody, i'm tired of being jerked around, okay? so lets just not pretend. i don't have fuc...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way.

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Chuck Palahniuk

Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way.

Chuck Palahniuk

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