Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.

Don't have a mother,' he said. Not only had he no mother, but he had not the slightest desire to have one. He thought them very over-rated persons.

My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.

The only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us.

So what’s it like to live without emotions? (Geary) It’s hard. Imagine a world without taste. A world where you can see the colors and all, but you can’t feel it. A beautiful clear day can never choke you up. A child’s laughter doesn’t make you smile. You don’t look at a bunny and think ‘how cute.’ You feel absolutely nothing. It’s like being wrapped in thick cotton all the time. (Arik)

I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.

The fire was silent, the little houses collapsing into the flames without complaint, flocks of sparks rising to the sky. At a distance it seemed beautiful, and I thought it was strange that powerful violence is often so pleasing to the eye.

It's no fun to be yellow. Maybe I'm not all yellow. I don't know. I think maybe I'm just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn't give much of a damn if they lose their gloves. One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something - it used to drive mother crazy when I was a kid. Some guys spend days looking for something they've lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much. Maybe that's why I'm partly yellow. It's no excuse, though. It really isn't. What you should be is not yellow at all.

I remember that my mother once told me that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.

Where is your mother, Charlie asked. Dead. I’m sorry to hear that Thank you. But she was always dead.

By giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil, because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare, and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men.

I think nobody alive today is a more powerful agent of conversion than someone like Mother Teresa. You can refute arguments but not her life. When she came to the National Prayer Breakfast and lectured President Clinton about abortion, he had nothing to say to her. He can't argue with a saint. It's too bad there isn't an easier way, because becoming a saint is not the easiest thing in the world. It's much easier to become an apologist or a philosopher or a theologian.

You know, life is what you make of it- so beautiful or so what.

To be apathetic is literally to be without passion.

Mother love is the most powerful, the most irrational force on earth, even more powerful than sexual love. However, one does lead to the other, so best not to spurn the former.

The message of our campaign is "Make every mother and child count". This campaign is not just about health. It is also a powerful call for radical progress in women's rights and the rights of their children. Too often, the health of mothers and children does not count. In too many parts of the world, they are forgotten.

Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.

And in that far distant day when the gods become wholly beautiful, or we at last are shown how beautiful they always were, this will happen more and more. For mortals, as you said, will become more and more jealous. And mother and wife and child and friend will all be in league to keep a soul from being united with the Divine Nature.

I think one of the things I always loved about the comics was this idea that this character, when he goes berserk, that white, blind rage makes him incredibly powerful, but it's also a great flaw. It's almost like he loses consciousness of what he's doing. During that he can do great damage.

He really did not care whether he survived or not, so long as it rendered him unconscious and absolved him of responsibility.

The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated, except by those whose feelings are withered by vitiated society. Holy, simple, and beautiful in its construction, it is the emblem of all we can imagine of fidelity and truth.

Home, bed, sleep, mother--who knew more beautiful words than these?

The very beautiful rarely love at all; those precious images are placed above the reach of the passions: Time alone is permitted to efface them.

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.