Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

The knowledge of the cross brings a conflict of interest between God who has become man and man who wishes to become God.

Into every soul, however purged and fenced, evil appears to have as much freedom of entrance as God Himself.

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Our rulers do wrong from choice and right from necessity.

If we create independent life, but keep it under our control, what is that? It can be said to be a form of slavery.

From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the center is opened to it.

I'm a religious, spiritual person, but if there is good in the world, there must be evil, too.

Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.

The winds are nothing else but good or bad spirits. Hark! how the Devil is puffing and blowing.

A Communist breaks because he must choose at last between irreconcilable opposites-God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism.

We have resorted to every means to win back the position that Adam lost. We have tried through education, through philosophy, through religion, through governments to throw off our yoke of depravity and sin. All our knowledge, all our inventions, all our developments and ambitious plans move us ahead only a very little before we drop back again to the point from which we started. For we are still making the same mistake that Adam made - - we are still trying to be king in our own right, and with our own power, instead of obeying God's law.

It then becomes necessary to stop short and make a choice: Either/Or. Either one drifts with their absurd system of ideas, believing that this is the human community. Or one dissents totally from their system of ideas and stands as a lonely human being. (But luckily one notices that the others are in the same crisis and making the same choices.)

Your money, or your life. We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does.

God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.

Watch for the devil. When there’s a god, there’s always a legion of devils.

Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.

Nothing will get you into trouble so deep or as sad as faith.

The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.

When Eve upon the first of Men The apple press'd with specious cant, Oh! what a thousand pities then That Adam was not Adamant!

The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.

Satan stations more devils on monastery walls than in the dens of iniquity, for the latter offer no resistance.

And I thought, there was no God, there was only what you wanted.

He who performs his duty in a station of great power must needs incur the utter enmity of many, and the high displeasure of more.