Chuck Palahniuk

The first time we meet another person an insidious little voice in our head says, 'I might wear eyeglasses or be chunky around the hips or a girl, but at least I'm not Gay or Black or a Jew.' Meaning: I may be me - but at least I have the good sense not to be YOU.

"Old habits die hard."

It simply makes sense that I should miss my parents more than they miss me, especially when you consider that they only loved me for thirteen years while I loved them my entire life.

"The truth is you stay in Hell until you forgive yourself."

"A woman eats to feed her pussy." Meaning: Anything we do to excess is in compensation for not getting a minimum amount of sexual gratification....Men overimbibe alcohol because their penises are thirsty.

"What do I think I am? In a thousand words....I don't have a clue, but I'll start by abandoning hope. Please help me, Satan. That would make me so happy. Help me give up my addiction to hope."

"Like so many experiences you venture into knowing full well that they'll be terrible, in fact the core pleasure resides in their very innate badness,..."

"To prove that I exist I must kill you....If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. But if I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist....then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master."

Why is it that I occur as a story to everyone except myself?

I do hereby and forever abandon abandoning all hope. Honestly, I give up on giving up. I'm just not cut out to be some hopeless, disillusioned wretch with no aspirations for the rest of the eternity, sprawled catatonic in my own feces on a cold stone floor. In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple of days of hopelessness. Future scientists would call it Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case of history chasing rainbows.

In Hell you'd be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. The same goes for earth.

If there's a trick to doing a job you hate... Mrs. Clark says it's to find a job you hate even more.