Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

I'm going to continue writing. I'll always be a storyteller. But I'm also taking time to enjoy my life.

The day the producers aren't minting money, or the fans are done with me and, most of all, I as a person get bored of acting, I will stop and pursue my other interests. There is a lot to do: painting, writing, direction.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I dropped out of school for a semester, transferred to another college, switched to an art major, graduated, got married, and for a while worked as a graphic designer.

I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I'm enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.

I had a nice talk with my parents and told them I was going to give singing a go. I will go back to studying, but I'd love to get a degree in writing.

At 33 years old, I didn't have to work anymore. I had to search through 'What am I going to do for the rest of my life?' I wasn't ready to fly-fish for the rest of my life.

It's rare, in my opinion, that we get to see someone who is in his late thirties, with a wife and children who he has to support, realizing that what he is doing is not fulfilling him in a way that he really wants. He knows what will and he goes after it.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.

My career was about to change radically, in turning 50 I had hit the age where my Dad made a big career and his life started to unravel.

Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't believe in talent. I believe in passion.

I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something--or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip.

Writing does not exclude the full life; it demands it.

I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].

A couple months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I'd given it up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn't matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones.

I gave up accounting. I went in for about six months writing ad copy. I was fired from that, and then another guy and I did a kind of poor man's Bob and Ray kind of syndicated radio show. Then I decided to stick it out and see what happened. I'd give it a year, a year became two years, and then two years became three years, and then along came the record album.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.

I always say I want to eventually shift my career to directing and writing.

Now I write often. I decided that I need to write for myself - I can't really direct other people's material.

I have visions and ideas about different things. Other actors just inspire you, so writing is something I would love to do more of. I would really be interested in doing something in that vein, writing something for myself or someone else and directing for sure.

To be honest, I don't know. I started one [book] back in 1982 or '83 when I first retired. But I was only 25 or 26 and not ready to write my memoirs.

Once a year I try writing a poem, usually because I've read some poetry that amazed me and I want to do that.

Writing stories, adopting other characters, making up fantastic stories and tales, this is a way of perhaps enhancing who I am. Writing stories takes a commonplace old life and makes it all somehow more interesting. And hopefully I can do that in a way that touches a lot of people in their lives, too.