Lullaby Chuck Palahniuk Book Quotes

I realized that my book readings were boring me. I was going to go up there and read a passage and sleepwalk through the whole event and I needed to make it more interesting. I wanted to be running and jumping and do something so that the event would be so exciting. I had to trick myself into having fun every time. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

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

If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
His words, in His Bible. The Book of Genesis, chapter eleven
So our God, our all -powerful God got so scared He scattered the human race across the face of the earth, and shattered their language to heep His children apart.
An almighty God this insecure? Who pits his children against each other, to keep them weak. This is the God we're supposed to worship? ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Books can create a depth of story, a background of information and ideas, that televison and movies can't. Sure, the television shows may shock, but only on a superficial level. They'd never risk market share to really explore the issues. They report, but don't analyze or suggest any new ways for living our lives. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

With a book, you're guaranteed the audience has a certain skill level and that the audience has to make an ongoing effort to consume this product and that the project is being consumed by just one person at a time. I really want to play to that strength because it's one of the few advantages books still have. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

This book is, in a way, a scrapbook of my writing life. From shopping the cathedral flea market in Barcelona with David Sedaris to having drinks at Cognac with Nora Ephron just months before she died. To the years of sporadic correspondence I had with Thom Jones and Ira Levin. I've stalked my share of mentors, asking for advice.
Therefore, if you came back another day and asked me to teach you, I'd tell you that becoming an author involves more than talent and skill. I've known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them. And I've seen writers who sold a single book and became so disillusioned by the process that they never wrote another. I'd paraphrase the writer Joy Williams, who says that writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea - but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, market the manuscript, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys, slog through the interviews and write the essays to promote it, and finally to show up in a dozen cities and autograph copies for thousands or tens of thousands of people…
And then I'd tell you, "Now get off my porch."
But if you came back to me a third time, I'd say, "Kid…" I'd say, "Don't say I didn't warn you. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Worker bees can leave.
Even drones can fly away.
The Queen is their slave. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

People would make a much fuller confession to Satan than to God. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

What I'm always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of campfires and fireplaces - the ghost stories that engaged us. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to produce a risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book ... A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a "mass medium." No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I'm not really into comfort books. There are too many of those as it is. Just sort of narcotic books, like my grandmother used to read. They have value like Paxil has value, but there's plenty of them in the world already. There's a shortage of confronting, stimulating, exciting books. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

It's hard to explain to someone who's never had the experience - the unmistakable, life-altering moment when you read a book and realize that someone out in the world has read your mind and put into words all the thoughts and ideas crashing around inside your own head. For me, it was like Don Swanstrom ~ Chuck Palahniuk

It is a hundred-year-old witch book, bound in human skin and probably written in ancient cum ... YOU lick it! ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

While writing, I tend to repeat the same song, endlessly, for thousands of times. This helps me ignore any lyrics, and helps create a consistent mood for each book. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

To see how boring you really are, write a book about soap and cults, and the profits you make will be your only means of subsistence. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now? ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The money is in television. Books are not the dominant medium of our time, so fewer people will create them. In a sad way, books have become a form of "comfort food" we expect to lull us to sleep. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

A book is as private and consensual as sex. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Discovering the 'impossible' ending to a new book makes me sick with joy and relief. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Language is what books do very well and movement is what movies does very well. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Guevara, here's our next Fidel Castro, here's someone who's going to wave the flag.' And I was like, 'No, it's just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won't have a career.' ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The first step to eternal life is you have to die. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I don't care what they do with my book so long as the flippin check clears. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash any part of the book on the next rewrite. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

At least Anne Frank," Comrade Snarky said, "never had to tour with her book ... ~ Chuck Palahniuk

On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

It's interesting because when David Fincher was making "Fight Club," he said, "It's a romance." And it really is. Almost everything I ever write is just a romance. And that needed to be sort of pointed up at the end of "Fight Club." The film has a very different ending than the book does. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Every author has to eventually write a food book. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

You take enough blasting gelatin and wrap the foundation columns of anything, you can topple any building in the world. You have to tamp it good and tight with sandbags so the blast goes against the column and not out into the parking garage around the column.
This how-to stuff isn't in any history book. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Few things in life seem more sexy than a banned book. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead.
You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I think standardization is really the first step to something being commodified. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Look at her, the poor woman," Milo said compassionately, as he sealed her mouth with duct tape. "We need to deprogram her. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Rant Casey used to say, "No matter what happens, it's always now ... " Talk about cryptic.
I think what Rant meant was, we live in the present moment of reality, and no matter what's come before, no matter how much we loved a person or a dog, when it attacks us we'll react to that moment of danger. ~ Chuck Palahniuk