Home > Work > Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread
1 " We ourselves, will resurrect the memory in order to savor it and carry it forth into the world. We will fling it at one another for laughs. Distort it. We will toss the story into the air at parties and howl over its ripeness. Degraded as it was, we will degrade it further. Make it more swollen. We shall render it impossibly awful, making of it the mythology of ourselves. A comfort. Proof of the trials we've survived. "
― Chuck Palahniuk , Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread
2 " Aim low and you won't be disappointed. "
3 " Since boyhood, fury had become his father. His older brother. His only protector. Fury gave him strength and courage and spurred him to always move forward despite always getting things wrong and always failing and no mentor there to help him or teach him and everyone always laughing. Anger delivered him from catastrophe. Rage kept him from going under. It had come to be his greatest asset and only strategy. "
4 " Listening, it occurred to Randall that the love people feel for animals is the purest form of love. Loving an animal, a horse, cat, or dog, was always a romantic tragedy. It meant loving something that would die before you. Like that movie with Ali McGraw. There was no future, just the affection of the present moment. You didn't expect a big payoff, someday. "
5 " They'd told him he had talent. That word was heroin to the young. Talent "
6 " It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up whatever you’re trying to say. "
7 " By the time you turn thirty, your life is about escaping the person you've become in order to escape the person you've become in order to escape the person you started as. "
8 " And when they're old enough I'm going to tell my little girls that everybody looks a little crazy if you're looking close enough, and if, you can't look that close then you don't really love them. All the while life goes around. And if you keep waiting for somebody perfect you'll never find love, because it's how much you love them is what makes them perfect. "
9 " The ice-cold way death can hit you in the noontime of a sunny day just when you'd never expect. "
10 " Don't take this the wrong way, okay?" She chuckled grimly. "My idea of Hell would be going to Heaven and being forced to pretend I'm like you for the rest of eternity. "
11 " What I do know is I've got a brain filled with jokes I can't forget - like a tumor the size of a grapefruit inside of my skull. And I know that eventually even dog shit turns white and stops stinking, but I have this permanent head filled with crap I've been trained my whole life to think is funny. "
12 " Watching hours of television seemed to help, but it took brainpower to be so dumb. "
13 " Rachel hadn’t invented the dangers of toxoplasmosis; she’d gone online and built an airtight case. This wasn’t crazy talk. Neurobiologists had linked T. gondii to suicide and the onset of schizophrenia. All caused by exposure to cat poop. Some studies even suggested that the toxo brain parasites chemically coerced people to adopt more cats. Those crazy cat ladies were actually being controlled by an infection of single-cell invaders. The "
14 " That might be the best any generation could achieve: to pioneer its own brand of corruption. "
15 " In Miss Chen's English class, we learned, 'To be or not to be...' but there's a big gray area in between. Maybe in Shakespeare times people only had two options. Griffin Wilson, he knew that the SATs were just the gateway to a big lifetime of bullshit. To get married and college. To paying taxes and trying to raise a kid who's not a school shooter. And Griffin Wilson knew drugs are only a patch. After drugs, you're always going to need more drugs. "
16 " She says that the problem with passive people is that they force you to take action. After that, they hate you for it. "
17 " The first rule of Flunk Klub," Aardvark said, "is you don't talk about Flunk Klub. "
18 " if history remembered him as an idiot, well, he was only one among billions of people. History could spare one man. All men are doomed to spend most of their existence among the dead. "
19 " The newspaper warns us about terrorist anthrax bombs and virulent new strains of meningitis, and the only comfort newspapers can offer is a coupon for twenty cents off on underarm deodorant. "
20 " Every age brought its specific terror. As a boy, Felix had lain awake, afraid the house would burn down. As a youth, he’d dreaded bullies. Later, it was conscription into the army. Or the fear of not learning a trade. Or never finding a wife. After school, his career. After his son was born, he feared everything. His secret dream was to face down such a horror that it would leave him inoculated. He’d never suffer fear of anything, ever again. These "