Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

I'm a sinner just like everybody else and I have my faults and I've been through my dark times in my life to where I wasn't walking the walk and talking the talk, or I may have been talking the talk, but I wasn't walking the walk.

There was a time when my whole life was in chaos, really, and I didn't help myself sort it out. But one day I came to my senses, and I think I was lucky because a lot of people don't.

Do you want to live life, or do you want to escape life?

I do believe that I'm an addict on one level or another at all times.

It is a true miracle when a man finally sees himself as his only opposition.

I have photographs taken of me at the time I was addicted, and thought I looked good. I see them today and realize my eyes were dead.

The only one who can beat me is me.

You have within you many strong and cruel enemies to overcome. You must know that there are still a thousand ties which you must break. No one can tell you what they are; only you can tell by looking at yourself and into your heart.

There must have been something in my nature - I believe, with all my heart, that I have conquered it now - which prevented me from being perfectly happy or making a woman perfectly happy.

Only when you're in that ditch, lying there in the muddy runoff you've made of your life, gazing up at the peak you fell from, do you truly know how small you are and understand how tall you used to be.

I knuckle down with my demons, and with my weaknesses.

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.

My strength and my weakness are twins in the same womb.

Deep down, I know that I am a child of God who has inherited divine capacities; some of them I strive to develop, others are left languishing. I also have a human side. I lose my temper, lose patience and sometimes judge others and myself.

It's difficult to talk about, you know, my inadequacies, my inability to stay sober when I'm a relatively bright man and I've had a lot of great blessings and a lot of great opportunities.

A man's conflicts represent what he 'really' is.

People always want to ask me about my drug problem - I never had a drug problem; I had a self-esteem problem!

In '85, I went through rehab and I wasn't ready. If you're not ready, you're not ready. You don't want to hear the truth, and you're gonna keep doing what you keep doing.

I was in the middle of a crossroads, which is a nice way of saying crisis, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You know the physical part. We just talked about it.

I looked into that empty bottle and I saw myself.

I've had times in my life when I really haven't been able to figure myself out.

Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness. And I like the whole truth, but there are nights I only need forgiveness.

What I am very, very moved and struck by is that so many people in the world are often living a life that they hadn't planned for themselves. And they wake up one day and say, 'Hang on. Who am I? Is this really me? Is this what I really wanted?' And also, 'Can I change it? Have I got the courage to change it?'

I was entangled by weakness, by passion, by sin, in coils which it was almost impossible to break.

When I was writing 'Southeastern,' I'd just recently gotten sober. For me, that was a major turning point in my life. It changed things I did on a day-to-day basis. My whole routine was upended. It took me some time to get used to that and figure out how do I keep myself entertained.