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It’s easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.
This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.
"A lot of young people try to impress the world and buy too many things,”
"A lot of young people don’t know what they really want.”
"If you don’t know what you want,” the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don’t.”
What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women.
After you’ve been to fight club, watching football on television is watching pornography when you could be having great sex.
My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what? My dad didn’t know. When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn’t know, so he said, get married. I’m a thirty-year-old boy, and I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer I need.
Fight club isn’t about winning or losing fights. Fight club isn’t about words. You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood. This guy trusts himself to handle anything.
Marla looks at Tyler looking at her dildo, and she rolls her eyes and says, "Don’t be afraid. It’s not a threat to you.”
she’s confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing so she won’t commit to anything.
"The girl in 8G has no faith in herself,” Marla shouts, "and she’s worried that as she grows older, she’ll have fewer and fewer options.”
Tyler says I’m nowhere near hitting the bottom, yet. And if I don’t fall all the way, I can’t be saved.
"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.” What I’m feeling is premature enlightenment.
"Getting fired,” Tyler says, "is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives.”
Marla’s philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn’t.
"When you’re twenty-four,” Marla says, "you have no idea how far you can really fall, but I was a fast learner.”
"The liberator who destroys my property,” Tyler said, "is fighting to save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.”
The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history. We, each of us, can take control of the world.
"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.” The space monkey continues, "Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.”
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. Unless we get God’s attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption.
"You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. 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. "We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. 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.”
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.