Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.

The American conception of advertising is to arouse desires and stimulate wants, to make people dissatisfied with the old and out-of-date and by constant iteration to send them out to work harder to get the latest model - whether that model be an icebox or a rug or a new home.

Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.

Magazines and advertising are flogging the idea that you have to keep changing things and get something new. I think that's balls - evil. But obviously that's your livelihood.

The only way to get love is to be lovable. It's very irritating if you have a lot of money. You'd like to think you could write a check: 'I'll buy a million dollars' worth of love.' But it doesn't work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.

There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.

Most of the things we buy are wants. And we call them needs, but they're wants.

Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

The manufacture of desire isn't at the heart - if it isn't absurd to speak of a heart - of the media torrent. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of the matter.

Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.

Women's bodies are used to sell anything and everything because it works, it grabs people's attention, and advertisers aren't going to stop using something that works.

Modeling is basically 'Buy more stuff! Don't you want some more stuff? It will make you look ten years younger and men will like you!' If I'd wanted to be a salesperson, I would have got a job selling.

Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.

Yes, I sell people things they don't need. I can't, however, sell them something they don't want. Even with advertising. Even if I were of a mind to.

I have to admit I've always had quite a complex relationship with modeling and with the idea of advertising: not always knowing what I'm advertising and selling.

Children's television has been grossly over-commercialized. The subtle message is, "Buy me! Buy me!

Madison Avenue makes us addicts of consumerism, using glass wampum to steal our capacity to direct our own lives.

I formulated the theme behind 'The Grand Illusion' album after observing how American culture creates illusions through advertising and entertainment to convince us that our lives our lacking, in order to sell products.

There's something quite shocking in this idea that everything is disposable and that people don't care for things anymore.

If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

Enchantment is the purest form of sales