Chuck Palahniuk Quotes About Culture

Quotes about: Culture

• The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Music, Art, Book

  Closing remarks at an eClass forum in Barnes & Noble University, December 05, 2004.

• Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Giving Up, Book, White

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Lullaby”, p.43, Random House

• We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Depression, Spiritual, War

  Chuck Palahniuk (2005). “Fight Club: A Novel”, p.149, W. W. Norton & Company

• Marla tells me how in the wild you don't see old animals because as soon as they age, animals die. If they get sick or slow down, something stronger kills them. Animals aren't meant to get old. Marla lies down on her bed and undoes the tie on her bathrobe, and says our culture has made death something wrong. Old animals should be an unnatural exception. Freaks.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Death, Lying, Animal

• Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. 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, but now they call this free will. At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Falling In Love, Order, People

• It's because we're so trapped in our culture, in the being of being human on this planet with the brains we have, and the same two arms and legs everybody has. We're so trapped that any way we could imagine to escape would be just another part of the trap. Anything we want, we're trained to want.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Two, Brain, Would Be

  "Invisible Monsters". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, 1999.

• We're the culture that cried wolf.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Culture, Cried

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Lullaby”, p.94, Random House

• Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those 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

  Giving Up, Hate, Television Commercials

  "Lullaby". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, 2003.

• An important part of building a new culture was allowing people to complain about their past. At first, the more they complained, the worse the past would seem. But by venting, people could start to resolve the past. By bitching and bitching and bitching, they could exhaust the drama of their own horror stories. Grow bored. Only then could they accept a new story for their lives. Move forward.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Drama, Moving, Past

• You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Culture, Safe, Fine

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.219, W. W. Norton & Company

• You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need. We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Spiritual, Strong, Jobs

  Chuck Palahniuk (2005). “Fight Club: A Novel”, p.149, W. W. Norton & Company

• Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  White, Black, Individuality

  Read Mercer Schuchardt, Chuck Palahniuk (2008). “You do not talk about Fight Club: I am Jack's completely unauthorized essay collection”, Benbella Books

• People die', she says. 'People tear down houses. But furniture, fine, beautiful furniture, it just goes on and on, surviving everything.' She says, 'Armoires are the cockroaches of our culture.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Beautiful, People, House

• Do we have free will, or do the mass media and our culture control us, our desires and actions, from the moment we’re born?

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Media, Desire, Culture

• And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Culture, Way, Invisible Monsters

  Chuck Palahniuk (2012). “Invisible Monsters Remix”, p.183, W. W. Norton & Company

• I am a writer and the greatest compliment I can get is to know that I've contributed language to the culture, that I've defined something, given it a name. So I think that is one of the great things a writer can do.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Thinking, Names, Culture

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Public taste changes and the aesthetic of a culture changes over time, so the idea isn't to appeal to the aesthetic of the moment and what people will like right now; the idea is to somehow keep yourself in the public memory so that as taste evolves it will eventually come to embrace your thing. So, it's about writing to be remembered rather than writing to be liked.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Memories, Writing, Ideas

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

• To merely observe your culture without contributing to it seems very close to existing as a ghost.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Culture, Ghost, Contributing

  "20 Q&As: Chuck Palahniuk". Interview with Stuart Hammond, www.dazeddigital.com. September 26, 2011.

• You're a product of our language, and how our laws are and how we believe our God wants us. Every bitty molecule about you has already been thought out by some million people before you. Anything you can do is boring and old and perfectly okay. You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it. You can't imagine any way to escape. There's no way you can get out.The world is your cradle and your trap.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Believe, Law, People

  Chuck Palahniuk (2012). “Invisible Monsters Remix”, p.182, W. W. Norton & Company

• Intellectual culture seems to separate high art from low art. Low art is horror or pornography or anything that has a physical component to it and engages the reader on a visceral level and evokes a strong sympathetic reaction. High art is people driving in Volvos and talking a lot. I just don't want to keep those things separate. I think you can use visceral physical experiences to illustrate larger ideas, whether they're emotional or spiritual. I'm trying to not exclude high and low art or separate them.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Spiritual, Strong, Art

  Source: www.writersdigest.com

• I went to sexaholics anonymous for six months. For research. I wanted to see the structure of the groups, how they were conducted, and what the atmosphere was like, and also to be able to describe the people as human beings, rather than as the dirty jokes that they are in our culture.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Dirty, People, Atmosphere

• People who don't want to get on with their lives, and don't want to accept responsibility for the direction of their lives want to hang out with other people who don't want to accept responsibility or move on, and so you find that your entire culture around you are people who are just like you, because that's what's comforting.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Moving, Responsibility, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• As a culture, we believe that if we kill something, we've killed the issue. That's why so many books end with death, why so many plays end with death, because it's full resolution. I'm always curious to know what happens after Romeo and Juliet die. In a way, that's the beginning of the story. Maybe beyond the story is even better.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Book, Believe, Play

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