Charles Michael Palahniuk is an American novelist and freelance journalist. Palahniuk writes in the genre of transgressional fiction and who is renowned for his novels ‘Fight Club,’ ‘Choke’ and ‘Lullaby.’ Profoundly inspirational Chuck Palahniuk quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
If you’re searching for clever quotes by great authors that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes from Coretta Scott King, powerful David Foster Wallace quotes and famous Douglas Adams quotes.
Famous Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
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 happiness. We learn so little from peace. Chuck Palahniuk
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open. Chuck Palahniuk
The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person. Chuck Palahniuk
The answer is there is no answer. Chuck Palahniuk
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring. Chuck Palahniuk
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.Chuck Palahniuk
It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. Chuck Palahniuk
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. Chuck Palahniuk
We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. Chuck Palahniuk
What we don’t understand we can make mean anything. Chuck Palahniuk
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known. Chuck Palahniuk
A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart. Chuck Palahniuk
What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction. Chuck Palahniuk
My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash any part of the book on the next rewrite. Chuck Palahniuk
I don’t want to die without any scars. Chuck Palahniuk
My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash any part of the book on the next rewrite. Chuck Palahniuk
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open. Chuck Palahniuk
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. Chuck Palahniuk
This is your life and its ending one moment at a time. Chuck Palahniuk
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? Chuck Palahniuk
The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That’s the only lasting thing you can create. Chuck Palahniuk
Masochism is a valuable job skill. Chuck Palahniuk
You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past. Chuck Palahniuk
Destruction is always an attractive idea. My brother and I used to spend weeks making models of cities so that we could destroy them in 15 minutes. There’s a fantastic joy in destroying something that you’ve meticulously built. Then you’re free to build a new thing. Destruction and creation they’re inseparable. Chuck Palahniuk
You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways. Chuck Palahniuk
Every author has to eventually write a food book. Chuck Palahniuk
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. Chuck Palahniuk
If you flee from the things you fear, there’s no resolution. Chuck Palahniuk
You are not special. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We’re all part of the same compost heap. We’re all singing, all dancing crap of the world. Chuck Palahniuk
People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love. Chuck Palahniuk
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character. Would you slow down? Or speed up? Chuck Palahniuk
Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism. Chuck Palahniuk
Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you. Chuck Palahniuk
I am the cause of all my upsets. I am my worst enemy. Chuck Palahniuk
If you love something set it free, but don’t be surprised if it comes back with herpes. 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
Parents are like God because you wanna know they’re out there, and you want them to think well of you, but you really only call when you need something. Chuck Palahniuk
Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home it’s your responsibility to love it, or change it. Chuck Palahniuk
Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit. Chuck Palahniuk
The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it, because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles, wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. Chuck Palahniuk
At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. Chuck Palahniuk
You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless. Chuck Palahniuk
Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. Chuck Palahniuk
No matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close. Chuck Palahniuk
We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it’s our job to invent something better. 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. 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 that scare you the most. Chuck Palahniuk
Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head. Chuck Palahniuk
We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. Chuck Palahniuk
You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Chuck Palahniuk
Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly all these make for great stories. Chuck Palahniuk
A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection. Chuck Palahniuk
No matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close. Chuck Palahniuk
We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. Chuck Palahniuk
You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it’s just teeth. Chuck Palahniuk
The bright future is that readers are accepting more varied forms of stories. Chuck Palahniuk
Most times, it’s just a lot easier not to let the world know what’s wrong. Chuck Palahniuk
The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage. Chuck Palahniuk
If you don’t know what you want, the doorman said, you end up with a lot you don’t. Chuck Palahniuk
Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. Chuck Palahniuk
All the effort in the world won’t matter if you’re not inspired. Chuck Palahniuk
Sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold. Chuck Palahniuk
I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. Chuck Palahniuk
I am enormously uncool. I’ve made a cottage industry of being uncool. And I’m fine with that. Chuck Palahniuk
Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish. Chuck Palahniuk
Any real belief in death is just wishful thinking. Chuck Palahniuk
The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage. Chuck Palahniuk
One thing I really envy about my friends who have kids is that as their children develop, they’re able to revisit their own developmental stages and recognise themselves and undo a lot of things they decided. Chuck Palahniuk
I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He’s taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise. 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
People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves. Chuck Palahniuk
I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That’s the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about. Chuck Palahniuk
The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend. Chuck Palahniuk
Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education. Chuck Palahniuk
You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you. Chuck Palahniuk
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. 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
Verbs allow you to communicate a story in a much more converged or involuntary way for a reader. The verbs allow you to come in under the radar, below people’s defenses. Chuck Palahniuk
In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it’s stunning how little imagination most people display. Chuck Palahniuk
Sometimes you do something, and you get screwed. Sometimes it’s the things you don’t do, and you get screwed. Chuck Palahniuk
