Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk Quotes & Sayings

The security guy asked my name address and phone number, and then he asked me what was the difference between a condom and a cockpit. — Chuck Palahniuk

Only two guys to a fight. One fight at a time. They fight without shirts or shoes. The fights go on as long as they have to. Those are the other rules of fight club. — Chuck Palahniuk

When I first started writing, there was no way I'd write a sex scene. That just seemed impossible. That's why in "Fight Club" all the sex happens off-screen. It's all just a noise on the other side of the wall or the ceiling. I just couldn't bring to write in a scene like that. So one of the challenges with "Choke" was I wanted to write sex scenes until I was really comfortable just writing them in a very mechanical way. — Chuck Palahniuk

I am Jack's broken heart. — Chuck Palahniuk

What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women. — Chuck Palahniuk

So much of 'Fight Club' was a rant against fathers. — Chuck Palahniuk

I guess my most prized pop culture possession is a signed first edition of the book 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk. — Jen Lancaster

Fight club exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends. — Chuck Palahniuk

I thought 'Fight Club' was great as David Fincher's version. — Chuck Palahniuk

Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. — Chuck Palahniuk

The first step to eternal live is you have to die. — Chuck Palahniuk

Love and life belongs to great risk. — Chuck Palahniuk

When the 'Fight Club' movie was going into production, I quit my job so I could write full-time. — Chuck Palahniuk

If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't. — Chuck Palahniuk

I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can."
I looked around and said, okay. Okay, I say, but outside in the parking lot.
So we went outside, and I asked if Tyler wanted it in the face or in the stomach.
Tyler said, "Surprise me."
I said I had never hit anybody.
Tyle said, "So go crazy, man."
I said, close your eye.
Tyler said, "No."
Like every guy on his first night at fight club, I breathed in and swung my fist in a roundhouse at Tyler's jaw like in every cowboy movie we'd ever seen, and me, my fist connected with the side of Tyler's neck. — Chuck Palahniuk

The world is going crazy. My boss is dead. My home is gone. My job is
gone. And I'm responsible for it all.
There's nothing left.
I'm overdrawn at the bank.
Step over the edge.
The police tape flutters between me and oblivion.
Step over the edge.
What else is there?
Step over the edge.
There's Marla.
Jump over the edge. — Chuck Palahniuk

Tyler and me at the edge of the roof, the gun in my mouth, I'm wondering how clean this gun is. — Chuck Palahniuk

When I first used to tour, guys would come up and say, 'Where's the fight club in my area?' and I would say, 'There isn't one.' And they'd say, 'No, no, you can tell me, you can tell me.' — Chuck Palahniuk

When you're twenty-four," Marla says, "you have no idea how far you can really fall, but I was a fast learner. — Chuck Palahniuk

Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let ... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may. — Chuck Palahniuk

My first four books, from 'Fight Club' to 'Choke,' dealt with personal identity issues. The crises the narrators found themselves in were generated by themselves. — Chuck Palahniuk

The first rule of fight club is, you don't talk about fight club. — Chuck Palahniuk

It's interesting because when David Fincher was making "Fight Club," he said, "It's a romance." And it really is. Almost everything I ever write is just a romance. And that needed to be sort of pointed up at the end of "Fight Club." The film has a very different ending than the book does. — Chuck Palahniuk

And it [Fight Club novel] was written so general that my father thought I was writing about his father, and my boss thought I was writing about his boss. People really put themselves, you know, in the shoes of the narrator. — Chuck Palahniuk

People said that 'Fight Club' would be impossible to turn into a movie, but I think David Fincher loved that challenge. — Chuck Palahniuk

I get a lot of letters from women who insist that 'Fight Club' is not just a guy thing. They insist that women have the same rage and need the same outlet. — Chuck Palahniuk

After you've been to fight club, watching football on television is watching pornography when you could be having great sex. — Chuck Palahniuk

We want you, not your money. As long as you're at fight club, you're not how much money you've got in the bank. You're not your job. You're not your family, and you're not who you tell yourself. You're not your name. You're not your problems. You're not your age. You are not your hopes. You will not be saved. We are all going to die, someday. — Chuck Palahniuk

I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Guevara, here's our next Fidel Castro, here's someone who's going to wave the flag.' And I was like, 'No, it's just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won't have a career.' — Chuck Palahniuk

The crap and the trash of the world. Post-consumer human butt wipe that no one would ever go to the trouble to recycle. — Chuck Palahniuk

This isn't about love as in caring. This is about property as in ownership. — Chuck Palahniuk

For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone. — Chuck Palahniuk

And the seventh rule is if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight. — Chuck Palahniuk

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. — Chuck Palahniuk

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. — Chuck Palahniuk

The door to my boss's office is always closed now, and we haven't traded more than two words any day since he found the fight club rules in the copy machine and I maybe implied I might gut him with a shotgun blast. Just me clowning around, again. — Chuck Palahniuk

I tagged a first-timer one night at fight club. That Saturday night, a young guy with an angel's face came to his first fight club, and I tagged him for a fight. That's the rule. If it's your first night in fight club, you have to fight. I knew that so I tagged him because the insomnia was on again, and I was in a mood to destroy something beautiful. — Chuck Palahniuk

No, this wasn't about money. Not everything is about money — Chuck Palahniuk

After fight club you're so relaxed, you just cannot care. — Chuck Palahniuk

I think, in a way, I invented the term 'fight club' and that these things have always existed, but they never really had a label. Nobody had a language to apply to them. I created that language in two words and I've been paid a great deal of money for inventing two words and labeling something that has always been around. — Chuck Palahniuk

Now this is the first rule of fight club: There is nothing a blue collar Nobody in Oregon with a public school education can imagine that a million-billion people haven't already done ... — Chuck Palahniuk

The sixth rule of Fight Club: No shirt, no shoes. — Chuck Palahniuk

Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells "stop!", goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight. — Chuck Palahniuk