Chen > Chen's Quotes

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato

“If we can forgive what has been done to us . . .

If we can forgive what we've done to others . . .

If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being
villians or victims.

Only then can we maybe rescue the world.

But we still sit here, waiting to be saved. While we're
still victims, hoping to be discovered while we suffer.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed.”
― Etgar Keret, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories

“The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That’s why I’m trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with someone even if they could have. I need to know these people exist.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Everything's such an effort, even caring a little. Even being such a gigantic fuck-up wears me out. ”
― Louisa Luna, Brave New Girl

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“...this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“I don't want to die without any scars.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“You hate America, don't you?'

That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Society is more concerned with material possessions than it is with the true love and compassion of another human being.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love.
It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him.
What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.
Now even that had flickered out.
How long I stood frozen there, I cannot say. If I was ever going to move again, someone else was going to have to furnish the reason for moving.
Somebody did.
A policeman watched me for a while, and then he came over to me, and he said, "You alright?"
Yes," I said.
You've been standing here a long time," he said.
I know," I said.
You waiting for somebody?" he said.
No," I said.
Better move on, don't you think?" he said.
Yes, sir," I said.
And I moved on.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Oh, God — the lives people try to lead.
Oh, God — what a world they try to lead them in.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ”
― Roseanne Barr

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.”
― Jon Stewart

“Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion... perhaps around their necks? And maybe -- dare I dream it? -- maybe one day there can be an openly Christian President. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively.”
― Jon Stewart

“Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.”
― Jon Stewart