Invisible Monsters

by Chuck Palahniuk

Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a computer disk. Burning a book. Probably that goes for killing anybody in the world. We’re all such products.

Another thing is no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.

No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention.

Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room.

“When you understand,” Brandy says, “that what you’re telling is just a story. It isn’t happening anymore. When you realize the story you’re telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan,” Brandy says, “then we’ll figure out who you’re going to be.”

When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?

Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.

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

The thing about Valiums, the Brandy girl says, is they don’t kill the pain but at least you’re not pissed off about being hurt.