Chuck Palahniuk

Nothing says you have to swallow this," Rant told me. "You can always just die."

How lame is this? We really believe a strip of paint down the middle of the road is going to keep us safe. That white or yellow line is some kind of protection."

You can get plenty of folks telling the same lie if they got a stake in it. You get everybody telling the same lie and it ain't a lie, not no more"

Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote common cultural lies. The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic system. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy."

Not everyone enjoys baseball or even fishing, but every person is obsessed with himself. You're your own favorite hobby.

You burn out your brain with rabies. Go all theta-trance-y with driving. You hit something and wake up naked in history.

History is, its just a nightmare. Cut off tongues lying everywhere.."

"By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child's faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money. From a man to an animal to a fairy. From toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairydom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels...dimes...and quarters. In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as her or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency." pg 61-62

How folks lay claim to a loved one is they give you a name of their own. They figure to label you as their property."

Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged-in and living lives boosted to them from other people. Hand-me-down adventures."

"What bothered Rant was the fake, bullshit nature of everything.

If you'll ponder the though, no one ever closes a thoroughfare due to the death of an individual...Death is a tragic event, but stopping the flow of traffic is always seen as the greater crime."