Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk

No matter what the future holds, ultimately it will be a disappointment.

The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate. Let Big Brother do the singing and dancing for you. Be a reporter. Be a good witness. A grateful member of the audience.

So if reality is all a spell, and you don't really want what you think you want She pushes her face in my face and says, If you have no free will. You don't really know what youknow. You don't reallylove who youonly think you love. What do you have left to live for? Nothing.

Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.

The masochist bullies the sadist into action. The most passive person is actually an aggressor.

Every day, just you living means the misery and death of plants and animalsand even some people.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.

The truth is, even if you read to your wife and child some night. You read them a lullaby. And the next morning, you wake up but your family doesn't. You lie in bed, still curled against your wife. She's still warm but not breathing. Your daughter's not crying. The house is already hectic with traffic and talk radio and steam pounding through the pipes inside the wall. The truth is, you can forget even that day for the moment it takes to make a perfect knot in your tie.

Either an ancient cursed Egyptian mummy has come back to life and is trying to kill the people next door, or they're watching a movie.

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. Oyster is telling this story.
The sailors called this seeding meat.
Oyster says, Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? Looking out the car window, he says, You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?

And Helen grabs my hand in her stained hand and says, I think you'd better get out of here.

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 a dead child, 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.

We're the culture that cried wolf. These drama-holics. These peace-ophobics.

But not to worry, he says. I have a badge and a gun and a penis.

I don't know the difference between what I want and what I'm trained to want. I can't tell what I really want and what I've been tricked into wanting.

I couldn't stop killing, Bonin once told a reporter. It got easier with each one...

The best part of becoming a reporter is you can hide behind your notebook. Everything is always research.