Chuck Palahniuk

This is what church should feel like.

There's worse ways to be dead than dying.

"Everyone wants to feel special - attain a special status among their peers - but not too special. Most kids only want to be special the same way their friends are special.

"It's compelling that so many cultures practice a meticulous yet transitory art form as a spiritual ritual, prayer, or meditation...Whether it's the Piranski eggs or the sand mandalas of the Tibetan Buddhists, their common theme is to somehow achieve an intense focus and complete absorption of the artist's attention. Despite the fragile nature of the artwork, the process becomes a means of stepping outside the temporal."

In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.

Though it was widely rumored that certain students abused medications designed to treat erectile dysfunction, legal counsel advised that no just cause existed for requiring students to submit urine for drug testing. Legal counsel cautioned that, though some tumescence may result from illegally obtained prescription drugs, the majority of genital arousal was naturally occurring and thus protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act."

Even Party Crashing can get boring if you can't find another team that's flying the designated flag, but at least it's a communal boredom. Like a family."

Each holiday tradition acts as an exercise in cognitive development, a greater challenge for the child. Despite the fact that most parents don't recognize this function, they still practice the exercise. Rant also saw how resolving the illusions is crucial to how the child uses any new skills. A child who is never coached with Santa Claus may never develop an ability to imagine. To him, nothing exists except the literal and tangible. A child who is disillusioned abruptly, by his peers or his siblings, being ridiculed for his faith and imagination, may choose never to believe in anything--tangible or intangible--again. To never trust or wonder. But a child who relinquishes the illusions of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, that child may come away with the most important skill set. That child may recognize the strength of his own imagination and faith. He will embrace the ability to create his own reality. That child becomes his own authority. He determines the nature of his world. His own vision. And by doing so, by the power of his example, he determines the reality of the other two types: those who can't imagine, and those who can't trust."

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 the common cultural lies.

You study any pretty democracy, from the ancient Greeks forward, and you'll see that the only way each system functions is with a working class of slaves. Peons to haul the garbage so the upper crust can campaign and vote."

You only ever is in the eyes of other folks.

To everybody, everybody else is a liar."