"By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember"
— Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)

"What we don't understand we can make mean anything."
— 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."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories)

"The past is a finite resource."
— Douglas Coupland

""When you're young, you always feel that life hasn't yet begun -- that "life" is always scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays -- whenever. But then suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive. You find yourself asking, 'Well then, exactly what was it I was having -- that interlude -- the scrambly madness -- all that time I had before?' ""
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)

"In the end, I think the relationships that survive in this world are the ones where the two people
can finish each other's sentences. Forget drama and torrid sex and the clash of opposites. Give me
banter any day of the week."
— Douglas Coupland (Hey Nostradamus!)

"Sometimes I think God is like weather - you may not like
the weather, but it has nothing to do with you. You just happen to be there. Deal with it. Sadness
and grief are part of being human and always will be."
— Douglas Coupland (Hey Nostradamus!)

"I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience"
— Douglas Coupland (Girlfriend in a Coma)

"What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives."
— Douglas Coupland (Hey Nostradamus!)

"The heart of a man is like deep water"
— Douglas Coupland

"There are two kinds of people I don't trust: people who don't drink and people who collect stickers."
— Chelsea Handler (My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands)

"I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"...we accept the love we think we deserve."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less."
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

"Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you."
— Chuck Klosterman (Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story)

"Think about some of the words that are used in these kinds of discussions, one of the most common being the phrase “open-minded.” Often the person with spiritual convictions is seen as close-minded and others are seen as open-minded. What is fascinating to me is that at the center of the Christian faith is the assumption that this life isn’t all there is. That there is more to life than the material. That existence is not limited to what we can see, touch, measure, taste, hear, and observe. One of the central assertions of the Christian worldview is that there is “more” – Those who oppose this insist that this is all there is, that only what we can measure and observe and see with our eyes is real. There is nothing else. Which perspective is more “closed-minded?” Which perspective is more “open?”"
— Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

"Ladies, let me give you some advice. You can throw all your stupid fucking chick-lit, self-help, why-doesn't-he-love-me books out, because this is all you need to know: Men will treat you the way you let them. There is no such thing as "deserving" respect; you get what you demand from people.. if you demand respect, he will either respect you or he won't associate with you. It really is that simple."
— Tucker Max (I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell)

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

"Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Hocus Pocus)

"We're all born lost, aren't we? We're all born separated from God - over and over life makes sure to inform us of this - and yet we're all real: we have names, we have lives. We mean something. We must. "
— Douglas Coupland (Hey Nostradamus!)

"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."
— J.D. Salinger