“I really love idiot, enlightened characters - these characters who fail to engage with the drama of their immediate circumstances they fail to be reactive and enrolled by drama as it happens around them.”
Love
“Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn't know anything.”
AgeAll Quotes by Chuck Palahniuk
“I believe in something. But I don't believe that anything can hold a grudge for long enough to condemn its creation to eternal punishment. Nobody can hold a grudge that long, even God.”
God“Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying?”
Alone“The most boring scenes are the scenes where a character is alone.”
Alone“I try to forget about the expectation that's out there and the audience listening for the next thing so that I'm not trying to please them. I've spent a huge amount of time not communicating with those folks and denying that they exist.”
Time“Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?”
Happiness“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.”
Romantic“Only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”
Power“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?”
Change“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.”
Life“When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?”
Future“I have a lot of money.”
Money“Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn't know anything.”
Age“You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.”
Best“Reality means you live until you die. The real truth is nobody wants reality.”
Truth“Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.”
History“You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.”
Time“Maybe it's our sins that give God consolation when he finally has to give us cancer.”
God“My goal is more to be remembered. They'll remember this thing and like it in the future. The trick is to stay remembered long enough for that to happen.”
Future“I think in a way, you're doomed, once you can envision something. You're sort of doomed to make it happen. I've found that the moment I can envision leaving a relationship, that's usually the moment that the relationship starts to fall apart.”
Relationship