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Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

Browse 10 quotes about Chuck Palahniuk.

Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

“The point was, there'd be nothing to this if you were beautiful and sexy. The point was, in a world where everybody had to look so pretty all the time, this guy wasn't. The monkey wasn't. What they were doing wasn't. The point was, it's not the sex part of pornography that hooked the stupid little boy. It was the confidence. The courage. The complete lack of shame. The comfort and genuine honesty. The up-front-ness of being able to just stand there and tell the world: Yeah, this is how I chose to spend a free afternoon. Posing here with a monkey putting chestnuts up my ass. And I really don't care how I look. Or what you think. So deal with it. He was assaulting the world by assaulting himself.”

“Men are so often made to feel inadequate and stupid for having feelings and problems and expressing their doubts and fears. Fight Club was the pressure cooker that lanced the boil of the pent-up existential crisis in masculinity that continues even more so to this day.”

“People in France have a phrase: "Spirit of the Stairway." In French: Esprit de l'escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer, but it's too late. Say you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party… As you start down the stairway, then -- magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put-down. That's the Spirit of the Stairway. The trouble is even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do. Some deeds are too low to even get a name. Too low to even get talked about.”

“We feel so superior to the dead. For example, if Michelangelo was so damn smart, why'd he die? How I feel reading the DSM is, I may be a fat stupid dummy, but I'm still alive. The caseworker's still dead, and here's proof that everything she studied and believed in all her life is already wrong. In the back of this edition of the DSM are the revisions from the last edition. Already, the rules have changed. Here are the new definitions of what's acceptable, what's normal, what's sane. Inhibited Male Orgasm is now Male Orgasmic Disorder. What was Psychogenic Amnesia is now Dissociative Amnesia. Dream Anxiety Disorder is now Nightmare Disorder. Edition to edition, the symptoms change. Sane people are insane by a new standard. People who used to be called insane are the picture of mental health.”

“How miserably hypocritical, you might say, but no sooner am I offered a chance to flee Hell than I yearn to stay. Few families hold their relations as closely as do prisons. Few marriages sustain the high level of passion that exists between criminals and those who seek to bring them to justice. It’s no wonder the Zodiac Killer flirted so relentlessly with the police. Or that Jack the Ripper courted and baited detectives with his - or her - coy letters. We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired.”

“To make it last, to keep from triggering, I tell Nico's flowered backside how beautiful she is, how sweet she is and how much I need her. Her skin and hair. To make it last. Because this is the only time I can say it. Because the moment this is over, we'll hate each other. The moment we find ourselves cold and sweating on the bathroom floor, the moment after we both come, we won't want to even look at each other. The only person we'll hate more than each other is ourselves. These are the only few minutes I can be human. Just for these minutes, I don't feel lonely.”