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.

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

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

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.

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

It's funny how you never think about the women you've had. It's always the ones who get away that you can't forget.

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?

Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.

Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished.

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?

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

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.

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.

If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.

The most boring scenes are the scenes where a character is alone.

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

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.

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.