Quotes from book
Lullaby

Lullaby
Chuck Palahniuk

Lullaby is a horror-satire novel by American author Chuck Palahniuk, published in 2002. It won the 2003 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 2002.

Chuck Palahniuk photo

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

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 20

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Doctor Sarah didn't start out by attacking and berating everybody who called her radio show," Mona says. "She used to have a little time slot and a little audience, and she seemed to really care about helping people."”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 22

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“The way you can go to Paris or Beijing, Oyster says, and everywhere there's a McDonald's hamburger, this is the ecological equivalent of franchised life-forms. Every place is the same place. Kudzu. Zebra mussels. Water hyacinths. Starlings. Burger Kings. The local natives, anything unique gets squeezed out.. He says, "We're landscaping the whole world one stupid mistake at a time."”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 19

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“These people so scared of silence. These are my neighbors. These sound-oholics. These quiet-ophobics.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“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.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 26

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“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.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy them, but now they call this free will. At least the Greeks were being honest.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Down through the ceiling comes a fire siren and people screaming that we're supposed to ignore. The gunshots and tires squeeling, sounds wee have to pretend are okay. They don't mean anything. It's just television. An explosion vibrates down from the upstairs. A woman begs someone not to rape her. It's not real. It's just a movie. We're the culture that cried wolf.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 17

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“I need to rebel against myself. It's the opposite of following your bliss. I need to do what I most fear.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 39

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Imagine immortality, where even a marriage of fifty years would feel like a one-night stand. Imagine seeing trends and fashions blur past you. Imagine the world more crowded and desperate every century. Imagine changing religions, homes, diets, careers, until none of them have any real value. Imagine traveling the world until you're bored with every square inch. Imagine your emotions, your loves and hates and rivalries and victories, played out again and again until life is nothing more than a melo-dramatic soap opera. Until you regard the birth and death of other people with no more emotion than the wilted cut flowers you throw away.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Maybe this is why so many serial killers work in pairs. It's nice not to feel alone in a world full of victims or enemies.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“The more people die, the more things stay the same.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Here's Big Brother, singing and dancing, force-feeding you, so your mind never goes hungry enough to think.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 14

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. …. Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? …. You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 23

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Imagine the books burning. And tapes and films and files, radios and televisions, will all go into that same bonfire. All those libraries and bookstores blazing away in the night. People will attack microwave relay stations. People with axes will chop every fiber-optic cable.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 7

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Until you deal with your real personal issues, you'll never be able to control yourself.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 14

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“This culling poem is a blessing. Why do you think it was created in the first place? It will save millions of people from the slow terrible death we're headed for from disease, from famine, drought, from solar radiation, from war, from all the places we're headed.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“The masochist bullies the sadist into action. The most person person is actually the aggressor. Every day, just you living means the misery and death of plants and animals- and even some people. "Slaughterhouses, factory farms, sweatshops," she says, "like it or not, that's what your money buys."”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“No detail is too minor to note.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“You don't become a journalist because you're good at keeping secrets. Being a Journalist is about telling. It's about bearing the bad news. Spreading the contagion. The biggest story in history. This could be the end of mass media. The Culling song would be a plague unique to the Information Age. Imagine a world where people shun the television, the radio, movies, the Internet, magazines, and newspapers. People have to wear earplugs the way they wear condoms and rubber gloves. In the past, nobody worried too much about sex with strangers. Or before that, bites from fleas. Or untreated drinking water. Mosquitoes. Asbestos.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 7