Fight Club

by Chuck Palahniuk

“The Animal Control place is the best place to go,” Marla says. “Where all the animals, the little doggies and kitties that people loved and then dumped, even the old animals, dance and jump around for your attention because after three days, they get an overdose shot of sodium phenobarbital and then into the big pet oven.

“The big sleep, ‘Valley of the Dogs’ style. “Where even if someone loves you enough to save your life, they still castrate you.”

Tyler says I’m nowhere near hitting the bottom, yet. And if I don’t fall all the way, I can’t be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn’t just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn’t just a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can’t just play it safe anymore. This isn’t a seminar. “If you lose your nerve before you hit the bottom,” Tyler says, “you’ll never really succeed.” Only after disaster can we be resurrected.

“It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, “that you’re free to do anything.”

but first you have to know that you’re stupid and you will die.

There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love.

The idea is to take some Joe on the street who’s never been in a fight and recruit him. Let him experience winning for the first time in his life. Get him to explode. Give him permission to beat the crap out of you.

“You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.”

“What you end up doing,” the mechanic says, “is you spend your life searching for a father and God.” “What you have to consider,” he says, “is the possibility that God doesn’t like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen.” How Tyler saw it was that getting God’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God’s hate is better than His indifference. If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? We are God’s middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no special place in history and no special attention.

Which is worse, hell or nothing? Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved. “Burn the Louvre,” the mechanic says, “and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. This way at least, God would know our names.” The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. The farther you run, the more God wants you back. “If the prodigal son had never left home,” the mechanic says, “the fatted calf would still be alive.”

The mechanic yells out the window, “As long as you’re at fight club, you’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself.” The mechanic yells into the wind, “You’re not your name.” A space monkey in the back seat picks it up: “You’re not your problems.” The mechanic yells, “You’re not your problems.” A space monkey shouts, “You’re not your age.” The mechanic yells, “You’re not your age.”

“You are not your hopes.”

“You will not be saved.”

Another car, and the mechanic screams, “We are all going to die, someday.”

The mechanic says, “Believe in me and you shall die, forever.”

The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second, you’re an object.

Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don’t need.

Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need.

The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.

“We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we’ll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re just learning this fact,” Tyler said. “So don’t fuck with us.”

On a long enough time line, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero.

How everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away.

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

bookstores were full of books like The Joy Luck Club and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and How to Make an American Quilt. These were all novels that presented a social model for women to be together. To sit together and tell their stories. To share their lives. But there was no novel that presented a new social model for men to share their lives.