Chuck Palahniuk

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.

The same way a compact disk isn't responsible for what's recorded on it, that's how we are. You're about as free to act as a programmed computer. You're about as one-of-a-kind as a dollar bill

Every evening, I died, and every evening, I was born.

If she was going to die, Marla didn't want to know about it.

She said when a boy and a girl dog copulate, the head of the boy's penis swells and the vaginal muscles of the girl constrict. Even after sex, both dogs remain locked together, helpless and miserable for a brief period of time.The Mommy said this same scenario described most marriages.

During the Cold War of the 1950s, American spies were issued eyeglasses with thick, clunky frames. If captured, they were trained to casually chew the curved earpieces, where fatal doses of cyanide were cast inside the plastic. It's these same horn-rimmed suicide glasses, the wrangler says, that inspired the look of Buddy Holly and Elvis Costello. All those young hipsters wearing death on their nose.

No, I say, it's fine.Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. Just great, I say. Really.

First your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.

Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master, and nobody had noticed. Still, i'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When i pass people in the hall at work, I get toally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.

Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit.

The shortest distance between two points is a time line, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life.Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.

Believe in me and you shall die, forever.

Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.

By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember.

Someday you will die, and until you know that, you're useless to me.

Fathers. Mothers. With all their caring and attention. They will f--- you up, every time.

Listening, it occurred to Randall that the love people feel for animals is the purest form of love. Loving an animal, a horse, cat, or dog, was always a romantic tragedy. It meant loving something that would die before you. Like that movie with Ali McGraw. There was no future, just the affection of the present moment. You didn't expect a big payoff, someday.