Fight Club

by Chuck Palahniuk

drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life. "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.”

"We’re not two separate men. Long story short, when you’re awake, you have the control, and you can call yourself anything you want, but the second you fall asleep, I take over, and you become Tyler Durden.”

Oh, this is bullshit. This is a dream. Tyler is a projection. He’s a disassociative personality disorder. A psychogenic fugue state. Tyler Durden is my hallucination.

I am Joe’s Shrinking Groin.

The first time I met Tyler, I was asleep. I was tired and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a plane, I wanted the plane to crash. I envied people dying of cancer. I hated my life. I was tired and bored with my job and my furniture, and I couldn’t see any way to change things. Only end them. I felt trapped. I was too complete. I was too perfect. I wanted a way out of my tiny life. Single-serving butter and cramped airline seat role in the world.

I fell asleep on the beach, and when I woke up there was Tyler Durden, naked and sweating, gritty with sand, his hair wet and stringy, hanging in his face.

I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not.

Valley of the Dogs. Where even if they don’t kill you, if someone loves you enough to take you home, they still castrate you.

Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.

If you’re male, and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.

Picture the best part of yourself frozen in a sandwich bag at the Paper Street Soap Company.

I know why Tyler had occurred. Tyler loved Marla. From the first night I met her, Tyler or some part of me had needed a way to be with Marla.

I am Tyler Durden the Great and Powerful. God and father.

The little figurine of Mrs. Patrick Madden knelt on the floor next to the body of her husband, the rich people, the people they called friends, towering drunk around her and laughing.

And the fight goes on and on because I want to be dead.

TYLER’S STANDING THERE, perfectly handsome and an angel in his everything-blond way. My will to live amazes me.