Chuck Palahniuk Quotes About Dying
-
If people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention.
→ -
There is a social contract in "Fight Club" and in "Choke" where the protagonist has deceived a whole bunch of people. In "Choke" it's all of these people who think that they've saved his life, and really care about him because they've embraced him and they've been his saviors. In "Fight Club" it's all of these people who are dying of various diseases, and they thought that Edward Norton was also dying so they allowed him really strong pent-up emotions.
→ -
She's so thin she's either dying or rich.
→ -
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.
→ -
You couldn't have small, dying children in a movie without really bringing everyone down, but you can in comics.
→ -
This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke, they weren't just telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.
→ -
Trust me, the being-dead part is much easier than the dying part. If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.
→ -
The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room masturbating and making money.
→ -
I'm always looking for context in which people tell stories. In "Fight Club" it's these support groups for dying people, and then in "Choke" it's 12-step recovery groups. In one novel it's artists' colonies, in another novel it's a diary form that submariners' wives typically keep so that when their husband comes back from serving on a submarine they have an accounting of their spouse's time. So I'm always looking for, number one, a non-fiction context - because you can tell a more outrageous story if you use a non-fiction form.
→ -
People will listen to you only when they know you're dying, otherwise they're just waiting for their turn to talk.
→ -
You have endless ways you can commit suicide without dying dying.
→
Related Authors
-
David Fincher Film director -
Friedrich Nietzsche Philologist -
Jack Kerouac Novelist -
Douglas Coupland Novelist -
Bret Easton Ellis Novelist -
Irvine Welsh Novelist -
George Orwell Novelist -
Ken Kesey Author -
Edward Norton Actor -
Ernest Hemingway Author -
Victor Pelevin Writer -
Charles Bukowski Poet -
Kurt Vonnegut Writer -
Stephen King Author -
Tom Spanbauer Writer -
Clark Gregg Actor -
Haruki Murakami Writer -
Fyodor Dostoevsky Novelist -
Hunter S. Thompson Journalist