Calli Rose > Calli's Quotes

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“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

“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

“No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.
Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.
This is all practice.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“A girl calls and asks, "Does it hurt very much to die?"
"Well, sweetheart," I tell her, "yes, but it hurts a lot more to keep living.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“I’ve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, “Why?”
Why did I cause so much pain?
Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?
Can’t I see how we’re all manifestations of love?
I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong.
We are not special.
We are not crap or trash, either.
We just are.
We just are, and what happens just happens.
And God says, “No, that’s not right.”
Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can’t teach God anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“I thought we were a real love relationship. I did. I was very invested in love, but it was just this long long sex thing that could end at any moment because after all, it's just about getting off. Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“You have a choice. Live or die.
Every breath is a choice.
Every minute is a choice.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Fuck me. I'm so tired of being me. Me beautiful. Me ugly. Blonde. Brunette. A million fucking fashion makeovers that only leave me trapped being me.
Who I was before the accident is just a story now. Everything before now, before now, before now, is just a story I carry around. I guess that would apply to anybody in the world. What I need is a new story about who I am.
What I need to do is fuck up so bad I can't save myself.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Because nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“Torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“people had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. nobody realized how boring it would become. with the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and addressed and recorded. nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. on a roller coaster. at a movie. still, it would always be that kind of faux excitement. you know the dinosaurs aren't going to eat the kids. the test audiences have outvoted any chance of even a major faux disaster. and because there's no possibility of real disaster, real risk, we're left with no chance for real salvation. real elation. real excitement. Joy. Discovery. Invention.

the laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.

without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“I mean, I'm just tired of being wrong all the time just because I'm a guy. I mean how many times can everybody tell you that you're the oppressive, prejudiced enemy before you give up and become the enemy.
I mean a male, chauvinist pig isn't born, hes made, and more and more of them are being made by women. After long enough you just roll over and accept the fact that you're a sexist, bigoted, insensitive, crude, cretinist cretin. Women are right. You're wrong.
You get used to the idea.
You live down to expectations.
Even if the shoe doesn't fit, you'll shrink to fill it.
I mean, in a world without god aren't mothers the new god? The last sacred unassailable position. Isn't motherhood the last perfect magical miracle? But a miracle that isn't possible for men, and maybe men say they're glad not to give birth, all the pain and blood, but really that's just so much sour grapes. For sure, men can't do anything near as incredible. Upper body strength, abstract thought, phalluses - any advantage men appear to have are pretty token.
You can't even hammer a nail with a phallus.
Women are already born so far ahead ability - wise. The day a men can give birth, that's when we can start talking about equal rights.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“My mother began to go crazy. Not in a 'Let's paint the kitchen red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwhich, I am God' sort of way.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors

“I told myself, 'All I want is a normal life'. But was that true? I wasn't so sure. Because there was a part of me that enjoyed hating school, and the drama of not going, the potential consequences whatever they were. I was intrigued by the unknown. I was even slightly thrilled that my mother was such a mess. Had I become addicted to crisis? I traced my finger along the windowsill. 'Want something normal, want something normal, want something normal', I told myself.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors

“I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors

“Doctor, if being a bitch is healthy, then I am the healthiest damn woman on the face of the earth”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors

“I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.”
― Augusten Burroughs, A Wolf at the Table

“I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel peaceful. Not happy. Not sad. Not anxious. Not horny. Just all the higher parts of my brain closing up shop. The cerebral cortex. The cerebellum. That's where my problem is. I'm now simplifying myself. Somewhere balanced in the perfect middle between happiness and sadness. Because sponges never have a bad day.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“That if you could acquire enough, accomplish enough, you’d never want to own or do another thing. That if you could eat or sleep enough, you’d never need more. That if enough people loved you, you’d stop needing love.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke