“I love being with people. But I need a script, a role, something that will help me overcome my fears of rejection and shame. Most religions and belief systems provide a blueprint for some sort of community. And the religion’s leaders model a way of being. For example, in my book Choke, a character enacts his own death and resurrection every night – as does the narrator in Fight Club. Here’s Jesus, allowing himself to look terrible in front of his peers. That’s the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public.”
Quoted in Andrew Lawless, "Those burnt tongue moments - Chuck Palahniuk in interview" http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_article_chuck_palahniuk_haunted_interview.htm, Three Monkeys (May 2005)
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Chuck Palahniuk 555
American novelist, essayist 1962Related quotes

Jewish Chronicle interview http://thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m14s150&AId=57994&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=murray%20perahia&srchtxt=1&srchhead=1&srchauthor=1&srchsandp=1&scsrch=999 (8 February 2008)

reported by Trudy Ring, "Georgia Governor: 'License to Discriminate' Bill Isn't Christian," The Advocate, March 3, 2016 http://www.advocate.com/politics/2016/3/03/georgia-governor-license-discriminate-bill-isnt-christian?team=social

Be More Cynical (2000) - YouTube clip "Bill Maher on Jesus" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4WMBzived0
Variants: I love Jesus. I just don’t like the Christians who don’t believe in what he says.
Realtime (7 October 2005) http://www.billmaher.com/?page_id=145
Jesus, as a philosopher is wonderful. There's no greater role model, in my view, than Jesus Christ. It's just a shame that most of the people who follow him and call themselves Christians act nothing like him.
Interviewed on The O'Reilly Factor (26 September 2006) - YouTube clip "Fox's O'Reilly: Bill Maher Looks Bigoted Not John Rocker?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2555oNAMcfA

As quoted in Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (1999) by Mike Marqusee<!-- p. 213 -->; also quoted in the International Socialist Review Issue 33 (January–February 2004) http://www.isreview.org/issues/33/muhammadali.shtml
Context: Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.
Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XII : The Will as a Maker of Truth, p. 140.
“My religion makes no sense
and does not help me
therefore I pursue it.”
"My Religion", Glass, Irony, and God, New Directions (New York, NY), 1995.

“My pollertics, like my religion, being of an exceedin' accommodatin' character.”
The Crisis.
Artemus Ward, His Book http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/eafbin2/toccer-eaf?id=Weaf482&tag=public&data=/www/data/eaf2/private/texts&part=0 (1862)

As quoted in Pontifical Science Academy http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/STELLAR.TXT