Palahniuk Short Quotes & Sayings

Capitulating when losing is an issue in war; capitulating when winning is an issue in love — S.E. Sever

A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine. — Chuck Palahniuk

I cannot read God's mind, however I can read God's Word. — R.C. Sproul

I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity. — Chuck Palahniuk

Be loving and the love in your life will increase. — Rhonda Britten

Every decade, we get a stunning collection of dynamic, heartbreaking short stories. In the past, those collections came from Barry Hannah, Mark Richard, and Thom Jones. — Chuck Palahniuk

With my eyes closed, I ask if she knows how this will all turn out.
"Long-term or short-term?" she asks.
Both.
"Long-term," she says, "we're all going to die. Then our bodies will rot. No surprise there. Short-term, we're going to live happily ever after."
Really?
"Really," she says. "So don't sweat it. — Chuck Palahniuk

As a child of the 1970s, I couldn't hold a narrative in my head; I was lucky if I could hold a joke in my head, because every time you turn on television or radio, it wipes the slate clean - at least in my case. After I gave up television, I found I could carry longer and longer stories or ideas in my head and put them together until I was carrying an entire short story. That's pretty much when I started writing. — Chuck Palahniuk

I would say the country is a different country. It is a better country. The signs I saw when I was growing up are gone and they will not return. In many ways the walls of segregation have been torn down. — John Lewis

Belief in non-violence is based on the assumption that human nature in the essence is one and therefore unfailingly responds to the advances of love ... — Mahatma Gandhi

I'm an equestrian, so I like to ride. Ride horses, I love to hike with my dog, love to travel. Most recently I went to Costa Rica, which I loved. — Kristanna Loken

My books are more about people experimenting with different identities and social models in a short-term way before they can break through to something authentic. — Chuck Palahniuk

If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can. — Chuck Palahniuk

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one. — Henry Ford

If you want the best the world has to offer, offer the world your best. — Neale Donald Walsch

The short stories tend to be a journalistic gathering of anecdotes that are put together to make something larger. — Chuck Palahniuk

Think about George Orwell's three-minute hate from the novel '1984' and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled and boring, perhaps we do need some sort of short-term violent chaos incorporated into them, to make them more palatable. — Chuck Palahniuk

Could there ever be a wise man without the wisdom or life or without the death of illusion? — Sorin Cerin

always close by when you're in a tight squeeze.
Dn't let the sun set on a quarrel with a pard.
A good pard will at least pretend — Texas Bix Bender

When I compare myself, my being-myself, with anything else whatever, all things alike, all in the same degree, rebuff me with blank unlikeness. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

My favorite books to give or get are short story collections. And always paperbacks because they are easy to carry as you travel. — Chuck Palahniuk

Men have an easier time buying bathing suits. Women have two types: depressing and more depressing. Men have two types: nerdy and not nerdy. — Rita Rudner

Intelligence is the flower of discrimination. There are many examples of the flower blooming but not bearing fruit. Bushido is in being crazy to die. Fifty or more could not kill one such a man. — Nabeshima Naoshige

Ideas come at any moment
except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper.
My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done. — Chuck Palahniuk