Top 500 Chuck Palahniuk Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Only after disaster can we be resurrected.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

102. “You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it’s just teeth.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

103. “The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up. The shortcut to closing a door is to bury yourself in the details. This is how we must look to God. As if everything’s fine.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

104. “It only takes one mistake and nothing else you ever do will matter. No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you’ll always be known for that one poor choice.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

105. “Waiters will always pee in soup, people will always fall in love.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

106. “The things you own, end up owning you.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

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

— Chuck Palahniuk

108. “The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

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

— Chuck Palahniuk

110. “Someday you will die, and until you know that, you’re useless to me.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

111. “Without true chaos, we can never have true peace.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

112. “For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you’re gone.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

113. “So here I am. This is as good as it gets. Take it or leave it.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

114. “Having nothing to lose is the new wealth.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

115. “I want to have your abortion.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

116. “You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

117. “I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I’d never have.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

118. “On a night without moon or stars you can’t see a thing, but you can imagine anything.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

119. “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn’t it just lie there and rot?”

— Chuck Palahniuk

120. “The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

121. “Without access to true chaos, we’ll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won’t get any better.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

122. “Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

123. “Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

124. “You kill strangers deliberately so you don’t accidentally kill the people you love.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

125. “If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?”

— Chuck Palahniuk

126. “We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

127. “The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don’t know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

128. “A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

129. “Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

130. “We’re all of us haunted and haunting.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

131. “The first step – especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money – the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

132. “Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

133. “Skinny guys fight till they’re burger.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

134. “Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things- they save you.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

135. “Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

136. “The air will always be to filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

137. “Some people are just born human, the rest of us, we take a lifetime to get there.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

138. “The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don’t be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

139. “Don’t rush or force the ending. All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

140. “Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!”

— Chuck Palahniuk

141. “Real writers write because they love to write. They don’t write for public acclaim.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

142. “Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there’s no difference between what is and what could be.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

143. “It’s all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

144. “Masochism is a valuable job skill.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

145. “The damaged loves the damaged.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

146. “Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

147. “More and more, the hardest part of crying is when I can’t stop.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

148. “Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

149. “You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

150. “At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you’ll have left.”

— Chuck Palahniuk