Choke - Chuck Palahniuk: life quotes

... Nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.

It's funny how you never think about the women you've had. It's always the ones who get away that you can't forget

And if you don't see somebody every day, you see them change.

Then she turns on the television, some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.

People really need somebody they feel superior to. So stay downtrodden.

...it's amazing what a woman will read into it if you by accident say, I love you. Ten times out of ten, a guy means I love this.

You gain power by pretending to be weak. By contrast, you make people feel so strong. You save people by letting them save you.
All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog.

When you're an addict, you can go without feeling anything except drunk or stoned or hungry. Still, when you compare this to other feelings, to sadness, anger, fear, worry, despair, and depression, well, an addiction no longer looks so bad. It looks like a very viable option.

"We don't live in the real world anymore," she said. "We live in a world of symbols."

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heros or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are.
Letting our past decide our future.
Or we can decide for ourselves.

How torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.

Without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace.

“My generation, all of our making fun of things isn't making the world any better.” she says. “We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.”

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heros or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.

People will jump through hoops if you just make them feel like a god.

"It's pathetic," Paige says, "how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How if we can't explain something we'll just deny it."