“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, quote from Choke
“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, quote from Choke
“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, quote from Choke
“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, quote from Choke
“More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Because nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won't get any better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“My first time I jacked off, I thought I'd invented it. I looked down at my sloppy handful of junk and thought, This is going to make me rich.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel peaceful. Not happy. Not sad. Not anxious. Not horny. Just all the higher parts of my brain closing up shop. The cerebral cortex. The cerebellum. That's where my problem is. I'm now simplifying myself. Somewhere balanced in the perfect middle between happiness and sadness. Because sponges never have a bad day.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“You gain power by pretending to be weak.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you'll have left.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“people had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. nobody realized how boring it would become. with the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and addressed and recorded. nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. on a roller coaster. at a movie. still, it would always be that kind of faux excitement. you know the dinosaurs aren't going to eat the kids. the test audiences have outvoted any chance of even a major faux disaster. and because there's no possibility of real disaster, real risk, we're left with no chance for real salvation. real elation. real excitement. Joy. Discovery. Invention.
the laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.
without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“You can’t fool people into loving you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“If you're going to read this, don't bother.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Anything you can aquire is only another thing you'll lose.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything... I wish, just once, I could say, 'This. This is good enough. Just because I choose it.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
“Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Choke
Chuck Palahniuk
Born place: in Pasco, WA, The United States
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“You've never in your life seen a horse run so fast! He's all power-all beauty.”
― Walter Farley, quote from The Black Stallion
“Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I had come, to tell him 'You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist.”
― André Aciman, quote from Call Me by Your Name
“You know," she murmured, "we're all heading straight to hell."
"Yes," said Masako, giving her a bleak look. "It's like riding downhill with no brakes."
"You mean, there's no way to stop?"
"No, you stop all right - when you crash.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
“I got used to seeing him waiting for me at the end of corridors, or sitting at the edge of my bed when I fell asleep at night. When he didn’t appear, I sometimes found myself looking for him or wondering why he hadn’t come, and that frightened me most of all.”
― Leigh Bardugo, quote from Siege and Storm
“Good luck can be enticed by accepting opportunity.”
― George S. Clason, quote from The Richest Man in Babylon
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One Thousand Gifts:...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
