Quotes from Rant

“We'll never be as young as we are tonight.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“What if reality is nothing but some disease?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Rant would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Some people are just born human, the rest of us, we take a lifetime to get there.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'

Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“We all have this moment, when your folks first see you as someone not growing up to be them.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Mylife might be little and boring, but at least it’s mine - not some assembly-line, secondhand, hand-me-down life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“After a good-looking boy gives you rabies two, three times, you'll settle down and marry somebody less exciting for the rest of your life”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child's faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust in a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money.

From a man to an animal to a fairy.

From toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairy-dom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels... dimes... and quarters.

In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Also consider that someday, when you’re dead and rotted, kids with their baby teeth will sit in their time-geography class and laugh about how stupid you were.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“To repeat, the way you get to the huge, impossible yes is, you start collecting a lot of easy, small yeses.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“I came to Party Crashing because accidents happen. People you love will die. Nothing you treasure will last forever. And I need to accept and embrace that fact.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“History is nothing except monsters or victims. Or witnesses.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Each holiday tradition acts as an exercise in cognitive development, a greater challenge for the child. Despite the fact most parents don't recognize this function, they still practice the exercise.

Rant also saw how resolving the illusions is crucial to how the child uses any new skills.

A child who is never coached with Santa Claus may never develop an ability to imagine. To him, nothing exists except the literal and tangible.

A child who is disillusioned abruptly, by his peers or siblings, being ridiculed for his faith and imagination, may choose never to believe in anything- tangible or intangible- again. To never trust or wonder.

But a child who relinquishes the illusions of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, that child may come away with the most important skill set. That child may recognize the strength of his own imagination and faith. He will embrace the ability to create his own reality. That child becomes his own authority. He determines the nature of his world. His own vision. And by doing so, by the power of his example, he determines the reality of the other two types: those who can't imagine, and those who can't trust. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“This is how fast your life can turn around. How the future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Picture the moment when your mom and dad first saw you as something other than a pretty, tiny version of them. You as them, but improved. Better educated. Innocent. Then picture when you stopped being their dream.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Ask yourself: What did I eat for breakfast today? What did I eat for dinner last night? You see how fast reality fades away?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Every high school has its Romeo and Juliet, one tragic couple. So does every generation.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies.

The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“If you look at old pictures, Irene Casey is so pretty. Not just young, but pretty the way you look when your face goes smooth, the skin around your eyes and lips relaxed, the pretty you only look when you love the person taking the picture.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“you ever been trapped in a world where you're everyone's worst nightmare?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“A cash-bought merit badge ain't worth shit.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

“Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant

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Popular quotes

“Suicide is just a moment, Lexy told me. This is how she described it to me. For just a moment, it doesn't matter that you've got people who love you and the sun is shining and there's a movie coming out this weekend that you've been dying to see. It hits you all of a sudden that nothing is ever going to be okay, ever, and you kind of dare yourself. You pick up a knife and press it gently to your skin, you look out a nineteenth-story window and you think, I could just do it. I could just do it. And most of the time, you look at the height and you get scared, or you think about the poor people on the sidewalk below - what if there are kids coming home from school and they have to spend the rest of their lives trying to forget this terrible thing you're going to make them see? And the moment's over. You think about how sad it would've been if you never got to see that movie, and you look at your dog and wonder who would've taken care of her if you had gone. And you go back to normal. But you keep it there in your mind. Even if you never take yourself up on it, it gives you a kind of comfort to know that the day is yours to choose. You tuck it away in your brain like sour candy tucked in your cheek, and the puckering memory it leaves behind, the rough pleasure of running your tongue over its strange terrain, is exactly the same.... The day was hers to choose, and perhaps in that treetop moment when she looked down and saw the yard, the world, her life, spread out below her, perhaps she chose to plunge toward it headlong. Perhaps she saw before her a lifetime of walking on the ruined earth and chose instead a single moment in the air”
― Carolyn Parkhurst, quote from The Dogs of Babel

“I am Gabriel, the messenger, the teller of astonishing truths.”
― Sonya Hartnett, quote from Surrender

“. . . waves of desert heat . . . I must’ve passed out, because when I woke up I was shivering and stars wheeled above a purple horizon. . . . Then the sun came up, casting long shadows. . . . I heard a vehicle coming. Something coming from far away, gradually growing louder. There was the sound of an engine, rocks under tires. . . . Finally it reached me, the door opened, and Dirk Bickle stepped out. . . .

But anyway so Bickle said, “Miracles, Luke. Miracles were once the means to convince people to abandon reason for faith. But the miracles stopped during the rise of the neocortex and its industrial revolution. Tell me, if I could show you one miracle, would you come with me and join Mr. Kirkpatrick?”

I passed out again, and came to. He was still crouching beside me. He stood up, walked over to the battered refrigerator, and opened the door. Vapor poured out and I saw it was stocked with food. Bickle hunted around a bit, found something wrapped in paper, and took a bottle of beer from the door. Then he closed the fridge, sat down on the old tire, and unwrapped what looked like a turkey sandwich.

He said, “You could explain the fridge a few ways. One, there’s some hidden outlet, probably buried in the sand, that leads to a power source far away. I figure there’d have to be at least twenty miles of cable involved before it connected to the grid. That’s a lot of extension cord. Or, this fridge has some kind of secret battery system. If the empirical details didn’t bear this out, if you thoroughly studied the refrigerator and found neither a connection to a distant power source nor a battery, you might still argue that the fridge had some super-insulation capabilities and that the food inside had been able to stay cold since it was dragged out here. But say this explanation didn’t pan out either, and you observed the fridge staying the same temperature week after week while you opened and closed it. Then you’d start to wonder if it was powered by some technology beyond your comprehension. But pretty soon you’d notice something else about this refrigerator. The fact that it never runs out of food. Then you’d start to wonder if somehow it didn’t get restocked while you slept. But you’d realize that it replenished itself all the time, not just while you were sleeping. All this time, you’d keep eating from it. It would keep you alive out here in the middle of nowhere. And because of its mystery you’d begin to hate and fear it, and yet still it would feed you. Even though you couldn’t explain it, you’d still need it. And you’d assume that you simply didn’t understand the technology, rather than ascribe to it some kind of metaphysical power. You wouldn’t place your faith in the hands of some unknowable god. You’d place it in the technology itself. Finally, in frustration, you’d come to realize you’d exhausted your rationality and the only sensible thing to do would be to praise the mystery. You’d worship its bottles of Corona and jars of pickled beets. You’d make up prayers to the meats drawer and sing about its light bulb. And you’d start to accept the mystery as the one undeniable thing about it. That, or you’d grow so frustrated you’d push it off this cliff.”

“Is Mr. Kirkpatrick real?” I asked.

After a long gulp of beer, Bickle said, “That’s the neocortex talking again.”
― Ryan Boudinot, quote from Blueprints Of The Afterlife

“So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“So, Buckley, huh?" he asked, pulling away from me. "You think he deserves that much credit?"
"Well, he did bring us together and all," I said.
"Oh, is that what brought us together?" His brown crinkled together. "I thought it was that ten minutes of unprotected passion in a cheap Manhattan hotel room."
"I'd give it six at most.”
― Rachel K. Burke, quote from Sound Bites

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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.