“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, quote from Diary
“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Just for the record, the weather today is bitter with occasional fits of jealous rage.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“You're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Everyone's in their own personal coma.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Just for the record, she still loves you. She wouldn't bother to torture you if she didn't. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history’s in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“For the record, knowing when people are only pretending to like you isn't such a great skill to have.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“You have endless ways you can commit suicide without dying dying.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Angel says that rich people don't like to tolerate much. Money gives you permission to just walk away from everything that isn't pretty and perfect. You can't put up with anything less than lovely. You spend your life running, avoiding, escaping.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Maybe it's just a daughter's job to piss off her mother.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“There is nothing special in the world. nothing magic. just physics.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“What you don't understand you can make mean anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“The weather today is partly angry, leading to resignation and ultimatums.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Stanislavski was right, you can find fresh pain every time you discover what you pretty much already know.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“How you're still always trapped.
How your head is the cave, your eyes the cave mouth. How you live inside your head and only see what you want. How you only watch the shadows and make up your own meaning.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“If you're not drunk and half naked by this point, you're not paying attention.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Of all the priceless objects left behind, this is what we rescue. These artifacts. Memory cues. Useless souvenirs. Nothing you could auction. The scars left from happiness.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Just for the record, being smeared with shit and naked in the wilderness, spattered with pink vomit, this does not necessarily make you a real artist.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“If emotion can create a physical action, then duplicating the physical action can re-create the emotion.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“According to Plato, we don't learn anything. Our soul has lived so many lives that we know everything. Teachers and education can only remind us of what we already know.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“Any time some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“You'll need to suffer to make any real art.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Diary
“The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit who is condemned to death is not prepared to acknowledge his sentence as atonement; rather, he sees his guilt in his own inadequacy. Thus, he recognizes himself not as a moral but as a tragic person.”
― Ernst Jünger, quote from Eumeswil
“You are necessary to that end, and to me...you are all I have of the garden. You are the image of me and of the One. And if you have wronged, then I have surely repaid your wrong twice over.”
― Tosca Lee, quote from Havah: The Story of Eve
“Ellie fought the urge to stamp her foot. "I meant it this time. Do you accept my apology?"
"It appears," he said, raising his eyebrows, "that you might do me bodily harm if I do not."
"Ungracious prig," she muttered. "I am trying to apologize."
"And I," he said, "am trying to accept.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from Brighter Than the Sun
“Audrey nodded warily. She had never cared for conspiratorial female conversation of this sort. Its assumption of shared preoccupations was usually unfounded in her experience, its intimacies almost always the trapdoor to some subterranean hostility.”
― Zoë Heller, quote from The Believers
“I love eating chicken with my bare hands. It makes me want to snarl at people, even more than usual.”
― Jeri Smith-Ready, quote from Requiem for the Devil
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.