Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside.

You don't go through a deep personal transformation without some kind of dark night of the soul.

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled: and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry; saying, 'What shall I do?'

From the wrestling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which startles us in Hamlet.

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.

My soul is dark with stormy riot: directly traced over to diet.

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

Negative emotions like hatred destroy our peace of mind.

I think I'm much less self confident today. I actually went through a quite painful period because of that thinking that I was completely hopeless. But I think that's something that we all go through at various times of our lives and it was quite a sustained thing with me.

The Lord had been very gracious, and spoke peace to me in the time of my distress, and I now most ungratefully turned again to folly; at times I felt sharp reproof, but I did not get low enough to cry for help.

Sometimes I think my soul is full of weeds!

During depression the world disappears. Language itself. One has nothing to say. Nothing. No small talk, no anecdotes. Nothing can be risked on the board of talk. Because the inner voice is so urgent in its own discourse: How shall I live? How shall I manage the future? Why should I go on?

You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.

Neurosis is an inner cleavage-the state of being at war with oneself.

And what if, in order to keep on living, I have to continue to accept myself?

We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.

While I was girl of the year and superstar and all that crap, everything I did was really...motivated by psychological disturbance.

[Neurotics are] torn by inner conflicts ... Every neurotic ... is at war with himself.

She could not trust herself to hope—but without hope, she realized, she had no reason to go on.

I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.

All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

Wind and storm colored July. Also, in the middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard, when holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather. I was wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across. I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully, drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed.

Inside it drives me crazy, my insecurities could eat me alive.

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.