Rant Quotes

“We'll never be as young as we are tonight.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Rant would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“What if reality is nothing but some disease?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you--do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Some people are just born human, the rest of us, we take a lifetime to get there.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'

Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“We all have this moment, when your folks first see you as someone not growing up to be them.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Mylife might be little and boring, but at least it’s mine - not some assembly-line, secondhand, hand-me-down life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“After a good-looking boy gives you rabies two, three times, you'll settle down and marry somebody less exciting for the rest of your life”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child's faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust in a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money.

From a man to an animal to a fairy.

From toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairy-dom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels... dimes... and quarters.

In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Also consider that someday, when you’re dead and rotted, kids with their baby teeth will sit in their time-geography class and laugh about how stupid you were.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“History is nothing except monsters or victims. Or witnesses.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“To repeat, the way you get to the huge, impossible yes is, you start collecting a lot of easy, small yeses.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, The Oral History of Buster Casey

“I came to Party Crashing because accidents happen. People you love will die. Nothing you treasure will last forever. And I need to accept and embrace that fact.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“This is how fast your life can turn around. How the future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Ask yourself: What did I eat for breakfast today? What did I eat for dinner last night? You see how fast reality fades away?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Each holiday tradition acts as an exercise in cognitive development, a greater challenge for the child. Despite the fact most parents don't recognize this function, they still practice the exercise.

Rant also saw how resolving the illusions is crucial to how the child uses any new skills.

A child who is never coached with Santa Claus may never develop an ability to imagine. To him, nothing exists except the literal and tangible.

A child who is disillusioned abruptly, by his peers or siblings, being ridiculed for his faith and imagination, may choose never to believe in anything- tangible or intangible- again. To never trust or wonder.

But a child who relinquishes the illusions of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, that child may come away with the most important skill set. That child may recognize the strength of his own imagination and faith. He will embrace the ability to create his own reality. That child becomes his own authority. He determines the nature of his world. His own vision. And by doing so, by the power of his example, he determines the reality of the other two types: those who can't imagine, and those who can't trust. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Picture the moment when your mom and dad first saw you as something other than a pretty, tiny version of them. You as them, but improved. Better educated. Innocent. Then picture when you stopped being their dream.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies.

The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Every high school has its Romeo and Juliet, one tragic couple. So does every generation.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“you ever been trapped in a world where you're everyone's worst nightmare?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“If you look at old pictures, Irene Casey is so pretty. Not just young, but pretty the way you look when your face goes smooth, the skin around your eyes and lips relaxed, the pretty you only look when you love the person taking the picture.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“A cash-bought merit badge ain't worth shit.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“How folks lay claim to a loved one is they give you a name of their own. They figure to label you as their property.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey