Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

Those of us who have come to years of discretion and more, must often take to retrospect, and seek to appraise the outcome of our lives.

We only really, deeply consider what our life is when we're faced with mortality on some level.

I have taken roads that I wished I had not traveled on. And I'm traveling on some pretty exciting ones, too. Just hope when you get to that great racetrack in the sky, that the balance will tip slightly into those things that you'd be proud of.

It's a question we all ask ourselves. What have we done lately? It rattles us each birthday.

I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life.

But I knew that someday I was going to die. And just before I died two things would happen; Number 1: I would regret my entire life. Number 2: I would want to live my life over again.

Reaching 50, I've started to conjure up thoughts of my own mortality.

I've been running from, and toward, death all my life, more aware of it than a person should be.

In modern times, if you're on an airplane and it's going down, that's it. You've got a couple of minutes, if that, to work out where you stand in relationship to the whole of your life.

If you are fully alive to the prospect of dying, you really start reprioritising your life.

I am not a depressive person at all, but I reflect a lot on my life, and life in general, from the perspective of death.

I don't expect too much from the afterlife, I think that I know very well what pain is. When I think of the end of my life, I think mainly: I didn't do nothing, but I could have done more.

There's a point when your tape of life runs off the reel and there's this stillness of your own - I got to know myself.

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.

No one looks back and regrets leaving this world. What's regretted is how real we thought it was.

Once people start to think they've wasted parts of their life, or they're wasting their life as they speak, that means there's going to be great dramatic and comedic tension.

Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?

Resolved, that I will live so, as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.

Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is that wastes in wasted time.

When I turned 50, I threw myself a big birthday party, and I looked seriously at what my life has been about. I recommend this to everybody. Ask yourself, "What have I done? How did I do it? Where'd I mess up? Where did I do well?" When I did this assessment of my life, I said to myself, "It was really good." I made a lot of people laugh, made a lot of people cry in a good way, brought a lot of joy to people, picked up a lot of garbage. And in all those years, I saw a lot. I went to foreign lands. I met interesting people. And I got it!

Someday, in the moment of death, your whole life will pass before you. In a few fractions of a second-because time no longer applies-you will see many incidents from your life in order to learn. You will review your life with two questions in your consciousness: Could I have shown a little more courage in these moments? Could I have shown a little more love? You will see where you let fear stop you from expressing who you are, how you feel, or what you need. You will see whether you were able to expand into these moments, just a little, to show love, or whether you contracted.

Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.

I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little.

When a significant other - a spouse, a parent or someone you're close to - is dying, it forces you to think about your life, about what you feel about death. What I realized from my dad's dying was that I wasn't scared of dying. But I was terrified of regrets. I was terrified of getting to the end of my life with a lot of Why didn't I's.