The 20 Most Savage & Profound Quotes From Chuck Palahniuk, Author of ‘Fight Club’

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

19) “On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

18) “You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.”

17) “Maybe you don’t go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don’t do. The things you don’t finish.”

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16) “Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly — all these make for great stories.”

15) “If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character…Would you slow down? Or speed up?”

14) “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.”

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

12) “What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.”

11) “Don’t do what you want. Do what you don’t want. Do what you’re trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”

10) “May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.”

9) “People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messed cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”

8) “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.

7) “I don’t want to die without any scars.”

6) “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.”

5) “In truth, the degree of anyone’s success depends on how often they can say the word yes and hear the word no.”

4) “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”

3) “You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.”

2) “Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn’t see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.

At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.”

1) “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.”