Chuck Palahniuk

The key to salvation is how much attention you get. How high a profile you get. Your audience share. Your exposure. Your name recognition. Your press following. The buzz.

The feeling is you have no control. The feeling is that we're being delivered.

The joke is, we all have the same punchline.

It's a shame," the agent says, "how medical technology is still lagging behind the marketing side of things. I mean, we've had all the sales support in place for years, the coffee mug giveaways to physicians, the feel-good magazine ads, the total product launch, but it's the same old violin in the background R&D is still years behind. The lab monkeys are still dropping like flies."

There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead.

According to the agent, the biggest factor that makes you a saint is the amount of press coverage you get.

After the caseworker told me about everybody in the Creedish district colony being dead and all, the first thing I did was start smoking. THe smartest things I've ever done is start smoking. When the caseworker dropped by to say rise and shine, and the only other surviving Creedish went south last night, then I sat myself in the kitchen and upped my suicide process with a good stiff drink.

Someone bent on suicide won't have much sense of humor left.

This is fish number six hundred and forty-one in a lifetime of a goldfish. My parents bought me the first one to teach me about loving and caring for another living breathing creature of God. Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.

"The Vietnam War didn't cause the mess of the 1960's" Adam says. "Drugs didn't cause ot. Well only one drug did. It was the birth control pill. For the first time in history, everybody could have all the sex they wanted. Everybody could have that kind of power."

Whoever invented this routine, the agent tells me, they pretty much run things in hell.

It doesn't matter if you do anything. If nobody notices, your life will add up to a big zero. People are looking for how to put everything together. They need a unified field theory that combines glamor and holiness, fashion and spirituality. People need to reconcile being good and being good-looking.