Home > Work > Survivor
1 " Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground. "
― Chuck Palahniuk , Survivor
2 " You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past. "
3 " Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it.How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages....The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished. "
4 " Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine. "
5 " You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble. "
6 " Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren’t. Where they fail, you have to go all the way. Be what people are too afraid to be. Become whom they admire. People shopping for a messiah want quality. Nobody is going to follow a loser. When it comes to choosing a savior, they won't settle for just a human being. "
7 " Reality means you live until you die...the real truth is nobody wants reality. "
8 " It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling. "
9 " The shortest distance between two points is a time line, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life.Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list. "
10 " These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful. "
11 " There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish.There is no free will. There are no variables. "
12 " If you never have sex you never gain a sense of power. You never gain a voice or an identity of your own. Sex is the act that separates us from our parents. Children from adults. It's by having sex that adolescents first rebel.And if you never have sex, you never grow beyond everything else your parents taught you. If you never break the rule against sex, you won't break any other rule. "
13 " You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble "
14 " The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage. "
15 " The stamp is something left over from an inpatient hospital program. In some other program RELEASED used to mean a client was set free. Now it means a client is dead. Nobody wanted to special-order a stamp that said DEAD. The caseworker told me this a few years ago when the suicides started back up again. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. This is how things get recycled. "
16 " The precious gift of life must be preserved no matter now painful and pointless it seemed. Peace, I told them, is a gift so perfect that only God should grant it. I told people, only God’s most selfish children would steal God’s greatest gift, His only gift greater than life. The gift of death.This lesson is to the murderer, I said. This is to the suicide. This is to the abortionist. This is to the suffering and sick.Only God has the right to surprise His children with death. "
17 " Suicide is very contagious. "
18 " You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble. So you just walk home. "
19 " Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified? "
20 " You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist. "