Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

I think dreams are metaphors. Everything you do in writing is metaphorical. So it seems like the same arena to me.

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.

Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

I think that movies can help guide us through those experiences [the problems that are happening in our daily lives, the stresses between countries, the economy and global warming]. I think all art tries to grapple with, redefine, come to terms with, express what's happening now when it's working. You can be entertained, but you can also be stimulated to think about things.

The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen and it can't compete with the computer screen I don't think. And now we have all those screens so against all those screens I think the book can't measure up.

I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction.

I think that cinema and television have nothing in common. There is a breaking point between photography and cinema on the one hand and television and virtual reality on the other hand.

There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street.

I think that people might watch reality television or what they see played out on media outlets and get ideas. We might be more anesthetized to divorce or bad behavior now because of what we see on television or on postings on TMZ. So it definitely could be filtering in to how we conduct ourselves.

Television has accustomed us to brief, intimate, telegraphic, visual, narrative messages. Candidates are learning to act, speak, and think in television's terms. In the process they are transforming speeches, debates, and their appearances in news into ads.

Television was not intended to make human beings vacuous, but it is an emanation of their vacuity.

What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.

If the liberal arts do nothing else they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace.

I think tension between the intimate and the vast is at the heart of every poem by any poet, though of course the terms with which it is explored vary. Perhaps it is something we seek out in order to affirm that our small lives are tethered to something large and ongoing.

He wants as many victors as possible for the cameras to follow in the Capitol. Thinks it makes for better television." "Are you and Beetee going?" I ask. "As many young and attractive victors as possible," Haymitch corrects himself. "So, no. We'll be here.

I think there's nothing more wonderful than using fiction to reflect real-world cultural ideas.

What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.

Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92)

I think right now television is the best that it’s ever been, and I think that it’s the worst that film has ever been.

I am sort of proud that I think radio has become a dominant influence in shaping public opinion. Good radio paints the picture for the audience. The audience has to be actively involved. Sometimes, in television, you can get lulled into sleep watching the picture, not listening to what you're hearing.

I think that's what all art is for - for people to express what it is to be human. That's the purpose of it.

I think we're dealing with a realm of human experience that doesn't get all that much attention on television.

Music mirrors where we should go, have gone and can go. Music is an abstraction.

Television is a formidable thinking tool. You are like an analyst to whom society's subconscious would be offered wide open.