Choke Quotes

“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.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“Without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won't get any better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Because nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“My first time I jacked off, I thought I'd invented it. I looked down at my sloppy handful of junk and thought, This is going to make me rich.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel peaceful. Not happy. Not sad. Not anxious. Not horny. Just all the higher parts of my brain closing up shop. The cerebral cortex. The cerebellum. That's where my problem is. I'm now simplifying myself. Somewhere balanced in the perfect middle between happiness and sadness. Because sponges never have a bad day.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“If you're going to read this, don't bother.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“You gain power by pretending to be weak.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you'll have left.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“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.

the laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.

without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“You can’t fool people into loving you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Picture anybody growing up so stupid he didn't know that hope is just another phase you'll grow out of.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Sex pretty much cures everything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Anything you can aquire is only another thing you'll lose.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“That’s pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“For sure, they don't teach you this in history class, but in colonial times, the person who got left in the stocks overnight was nothing less than fair game for everybody to nail. Men or women, anybody bent over had no way of knowing who was doing the ram job, and this was the real reason you never wanted to end up here unless you had a family member or a friend who'd stand with you the whole time. To protect you. To watch your ass, for real.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“By the time you're thirty, your worst enemy is yourself.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Sobriety is okay enough," Denny says, "but someday, I'd like to live a life based on doing good stuff instead of just not doing bad stuff. You know?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“I mean, I'm just tired of being wrong all the time just because I'm a guy. I mean how many times can everybody tell you that you're the oppressive, prejudiced enemy before you give up and become the enemy.
I mean a male, chauvinist pig isn't born, hes made, and more and more of them are being made by women. After long enough you just roll over and accept the fact that you're a sexist, bigoted, insensitive, crude, cretinist cretin. Women are right. You're wrong.
You get used to the idea.
You live down to expectations.
Even if the shoe doesn't fit, you'll shrink to fill it.
I mean, in a world without god aren't mothers the new god? The last sacred unassailable position. Isn't motherhood the last perfect magical miracle? But a miracle that isn't possible for men, and maybe men say they're glad not to give birth, all the pain and blood, but really that's just so much sour grapes. For sure, men can't do anything near as incredible. Upper body strength, abstract thought, phalluses - any advantage men appear to have are pretty token.
You can't even hammer a nail with a phallus.
Women are already born so far ahead ability - wise. The day a men can give birth, that's when we can start talking about equal rights.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“That if you could acquire enough, accomplish enough, you’d never want to own or do another thing. That if you could eat or sleep enough, you’d never need more. That if enough people loved you, you’d stop needing love.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“If you're ever in a big hotel lobby, and they start to play "The Blue Danube Waltz," get the hell out. Don't think. Run.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“He was assaulting the world by assaulting himself.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Every time we burn a gallon of gas or an acre of rain forest, aren't we killing the future to preserve the present?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The magic of sex is it's acquisition without the burden of possession. No matter how many women you take home, there's never a storage problem.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“At That Moment, it seemed the whole world cared what happened to him. All those people were hugging him and petting his hair. Everybody asked if he was okay.
It seemed that moment would last forever. That you had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“This is the worst problem with living history museums. They always leave the best parts out. Like typhus. And opium. And scarlet letters. Shunning. Witch-burning.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked...”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“When you're thinking about the rest of your life, you're never really thinking more than a couple years down the road.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring asshole and proud of it.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“And it's funny how when somebody saves you, the first thing you want to do is save other people. All other people. Everybody. The kid never knew the man's name. But he never forgot that smile. "Hero" isn't the first word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“More and more, the hardest part of crying is when I can't stop.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Every day: Wear sunblock.
Cover your gray.
Do not go insane.
Eat less fats and sugars.
Do more sit-ups.
Don’t start forgetting stuff.
Trim the hair in your ears.
Take calcium.
Moisturize. Every day.
Freeze in time to stay in one place forever.
Do not get frigging old.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke