Chuck Palahniuk: Want (page 2)

“There are a lot of things we don't want to know about the people we love.”

“You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time.”

“I just don't want to die without a few scars.”

“How you're still always trapped.

How your head is the cave, your eyes the cave mouth. How you live inside your head and only see what you want. How you only watch the shadows and make up your own meaning.”

“I want you to invent it. I want you to have that skill. To create your own reality. Your own set of laws. I want to try and teach you that.”

“There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. These people with dead children, you want to tell them, go ahead. Blame yourself. There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper.”

“I want to have your abortion.”

“I just want one person I can rescue and I want one person who needs me. Who can't live without me. I want to be a hero, but not just one time.”

“Love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, I'll be anybody you want me to be. Use me. Change me. I can be thin with big breasts and big hair. Take me apart. Make me into anything, but just love me.”

“The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly. The farther you run, the more God wants you back.”

“And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.”

“Anything pretty,' Claire will tell you, 'it's only for sale because no one wants it.”

“We have pain and hate and love and joy and war in the world because we want them.”

“Maybe the truth is I really want to like you instead.”

“Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.”

“For the rest of history, all over the world, people will be trying to save this same dead woman. This woman who just wanted to die.”

“Sure, everybody wants to play God, but for me it's a full-time job.”

“Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up the reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddenly retro.”

“In journalism school, what they want you to be is a camera. A trained, objective, detached professional. Accurate, polished, and observant. They want you to believe that the new and you are always two separate things. Killers and reporters are mutually exclusive. Whatever the story, this isn't about you.”