Not Forever, But For Now

by Chuck Palahniuk

Otto says that as soon as people fall in love they’re already looking for a reason to hate each other. Because everyone you love is just another fragile pink joey, and cancer will eat them, or wolves, so no matter how much you hurt you’ll need to still look down at their dead body someday. On that day, your only comfort will be to say, “At least I won’t have to smell your horrid armpits anymore.” Or, “Thank goodness your ugly feet died with you.”

What will it be, I wonder?

People say, some people, that we live nothing after the age of, say, three. After that we only relive the first time we danced near naked atop a pub bar.

If not forever, then for now.

Book title!

It’s from Felix, who writes, 01001111 01110100 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100010 01100101 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 01100100 00100001 00100000 00100000 01010111 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100010 01110101 01100111 01100111 01100101 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00111111? In gleeful response, Otto keyboards, 73 110 32 116 104 101 32 97 114 115 101 44 32 111 102 32 99 111 117 114 115 101 33!

Love that it’s all just the same thing and gibberish. Because one knows binary and the other knows decimal but they don’t know what the other is saying

We’re bright young things, and no bright young thing wants to squander his life as a custodian to the dead.

On not wanting to learn history

As Otto is fond of saying, “70 101 108 105 120 32 105 115 32 115 111 32 99 108 101 118 101 114 33.”

No species is as efficient as the human, with his liver and kidneys, at filtering out the filth.

“You ever wonder why God makes us so realistic on the inside?” He called, “Why he goes to the bother?” In response, I asked him his name. After all of this: What was his name? And he’d shouted in response, “My name? Digby!” To make a third Digby to pass through our lives to date. He shouted, “Eo nunc inter deos vivere!”

People say, some people, that we live nothing after the age of, say, seven. After that we only relive the first time we fell in love. The first time we felt left behind.

I must kill that always-moving part of myself that all young people need to kill. That reckless, restless me who I don’t want to be anymore by old age.

You see, servants might always be telling you what to do. And tutors tell you what to think. But elder brothers, they tell you who you are.

A person’s life must be given over to something, because the only people afraid of dying are those who’ve never lived.