You may not know the name of Chuck Palahniuk, but almost everyone has heard the names of his books, even if they are not aware of their authorship. Quotes from some of them are extremely popular.
Why is the author so popular?
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is a popular contemporary American writer and journalist. Born February 21, 1962 in Pesco, Washington. As a young man, seeking his own path in life, he dabbled in a variety of professions, including journalism, hospice work, and volunteering at a homeless shelter, which subsequently provided him with material for literary pursuits.
He began his writing career in adulthood under the influence of Tom Spanbauer, whom he met in his writing courses. The first books of the future celebrity were not even accepted by publishers for publication, but the story "Fight Club", which later developed into a full-fledged novel, and then filmed by David Fincher, made the author not just famous, but a cult writer. Subsequent works, in particular the acclaimed bestseller Suffocation, helped solidify the writer's success in the literary world.
Six books by Chuck Palahniuk were nominated for various awards in the category "Best Book", three of them: "Fight Club", "Survivor", "Lullaby" were recognized as winners.
An interesting fact. The writer's grandfather was a native of Ukraine, and his brother currently lives in this country and has the surname Palagnyuk.
Top 10 quotes from books by Chuck Palahniuk
Let's read? Only by losing everything to the end, we gain freedom. (Fight club)
Beauty is power, as well as money, as well as a loaded pistol. (Invisibles)
A good way to forget about the whole is to look closely at the details. (Lullaby)
The birth of a person is a mistake that he tries to correct throughout his life. (Invisibles)
Who you are at any given moment is just a fragment of history. (Invisibles)
All your life you try to become God, and then you die. (Invisibles)
There is nothing special in the world. No magic. Solid physics. Physiology. (Diary)
Whoever can does it. He who cannot criticize. (Ghosts)
There is always some excuse not to live your own life. (Invisibles)
Everything in life is either flesh or money, and you cannot have both at once. It's like being dead and alive at the same time. (Rant: Biography of Buster Casey)
Love phrases
Love? According to Palahniuk ... No matter how much you love someone, you still want to do it your way. (Lullaby)
The one you love and the one who loves you can never be one person. (Invisibles)
We don't want to know practically anything about those we love. (Suffocation)
Everyone in life has someone who will never let you go, and someone who you will never let go of. (Lullaby)
People kill what they love, and the opposite is true. (Fight club)
Get married before you get bored of sex, otherwise you will never get married. (Fight club)
After some time, you realize that it is easier to just admit that you are a sexist and a brute, an intolerant, unfeeling, heartless nerd. The women are right. And you're wrong. Gradually, you begin to get used to this thought. And you start to live up to their expectations. (Suffocation)
Favorite phrases from the book “ Fight club"
How it all began ... You wake up and be happy with it.
We are a generation of men raised by women, will another woman help solve our problems.
If you don't know what you want, you will die in a heap of what you didn't want.
Over a sufficiently long period of time, the chance of survival for each of us approaches zero.
Someone who suffers from insomnia is not really sleeping and is not really awake.
The things that you own eventually begin to own you.
The first rule of Fight Club is not to mention Fight Club.
"Lullaby"
A novel in the style of magical realism in the setting of sudden infant mortality syndrome.
The noise of cars outside the window is already unpleasant. And Chopin's piano concerto in D minor won't make it any easier.
I don’t know what I know and what I don’t know. I don’t know what’s true or what’s not true. I guess I don't know anything at all.
Spells are needed to focus our intention.
When there is at least some kind of power, even the possibility of power, you immediately want more.
"Invisibles"
Three main characters traveling across North America ... Fraud and revenge, false names and a clue at the end of the book.
The only way to find true happiness is to take the risk of being fully disclosed.
It is in this way that many parents drive their children into a dangerous trap - they assign them the role of their main support in life.
Somewhere in heaven, we live on video sites of the Internet, and the Almighty visits one or another page.
You ask people about their life only to get the opportunity to tell them about yourself.
We really do invent a tragedy ourselves in order to somehow fill an empty life.
"Suffocation"
The book is about a young fraudster whose lifestyle is to play attacks of suffocation in public places. End justifies the means?
The dark opaque film does not so much protect the couch from external influences as it hides old stains.
I already know more than I would like to know.
Almost everything can be cured by sex.
Whatever you get ... Everything turns out to be just another thing that you have to lose.
Those who remember their past still remember it differently from what it really was.
"Rant: A Biography of Buster Casey"
A semi-fantastic gospel from the disciples of a punk messiah from the future.
You can make a lot of people lie if they have their own selfish interest. And when everyone tells the same lie, it’s already true.
Young people decorate their homes with mirrors. Old people - with pictures.
To leave on your reputation, you are scolded during life and praised after death.
There are only monsters and victims in history. And witnesses.
For anarchy to arise, it only takes one driver who does not follow the rules.
"Survivor"
The book is about the only survivor from a religious community and the formation of a new messiah.
I decided: Hell can wait.
People use gizmos called telephones because they hate being together but are very afraid of being alone.
When you are already cursed forever, there is a pleasant side to this - you are no longer afraid of the curse.
These people often ask, “Did I do. Was I ... ”I don't know. I forgot. Or it's none of your business.
"Ghosts"
Three months away from the bustle of the world. Three months of creativity. Three sections of the book. Life or Reality Show?
Some of us: just meat that will soon go bad.
Madness is now a new kind of sane mind.
Making the American Dream come true: making your life a tradable commodity.
Absence is now a new kind of presence.
The trouble with eternal youth is that you start to procrastinate.
"Diary"
Disappearing rooms, mysterious messages appearing ...
It is difficult to forget the pain, but even more difficult to remember the joy. Happiness leaves no memorable scars.
If emotion can create a physical action, then reproducing a physical action can recreate emotion.
This is a typical American dream - to fence yourself off from everyone with money.
The incomprehensible can be given any meaning.
Dying is boring to death.
Contrary to popular belief, the philosophy of Chuck Palahniuk is far from the philosophy of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The works of both authors are filled with a denial of material values and social morality, however, the writer offers an alternative to Nietzsche's ideas about the perfect superman in the form of awareness of the meaninglessness of life and self-destruction, which, rather, makes him, with some reservations, related to Albert Camus.
Both writers, asking the question: "Is life worth the labor to be lived?", Come to the conclusion that life, being the embodiment of the absurd, is devoid of meaning, but nevertheless draw the opposite conclusions. According to Camus, a person himself is able to realize the absurdity of the world around him and find in it a meaningless particle of the world that will bring him happiness, while Palahniuk's heroes, realizing the world around them, gradually replace their meaning of life with nihilism, self-hatred, and only in this hatred they acquire myself.
"Only by losing everything to the end do we gain freedom"
"If you lose to yourself, you will lose to everyone"
Everything that exists in the world was once a dream.
To love is to stop comparing.
You need to be a little alike in order to understand each other, but you need to be a little different in order to love each other.
In a loved one, even flaws are liked, in an unloved one, dignity is also annoying.
The ideal man does not drink, does not smoke, never argues and does not exist ...
You can fall in love with a person after you know him well, and you can stop loving him after you know him too well.
Don't waste time with a person who doesn't seek to spend it with you ...
I appreciate honesty and frankness in others.
You can know anything, but until you prove it in practice, you don't know anything!
Don't love anyone and everyone will like you. Send the whole world to hell and they will admire you ...
"No person can become more a stranger than the one you loved in the past." (E. Remarque)
Other articles in the literary diary:
- 23.03.2011. Only by losing everything to the end do we gain freedom ...
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Life is an unpredictable thing, you never know what to expect from it. It seems that he thought everything over to the smallest detail, and the long-awaited fruits of the work done are about to appear, but life makes its own adjustments, unfortunately not always joyful. Everything that you have been walking and striving for for many years can collapse overnight, leaving behind only broken dreams. Bright, joyful days, replaced gloomy gray everyday life, it seems that the whole world has lost its bright colors. This is exactly what happens with people who, due to circumstances, have lost everything.
Of course, having lost everything, it is difficult to gain composure and start from the very beginning, but try to look at what is happening from the other side. Even without realizing that, having lost everything we gain freedom, we again have a choice, we can try to start all over again or choose a completely different path.
What if you lost everything?
Firstly, it will reconcile and get used to the current situation, try to take it for granted, and secondly, thoroughly analyze and find the cause of your troubles in order to avoid similar mistakes in the future. How to survive the crisis? How to find the strength not to lose heart? You should not blame yourself for everything, in every business there are risks, and if today you are not lucky, then life has prepared a different path for you. A crisis occurs on the path of almost everyone, there comes a time when there is no strength to fight, there is a desire to let everything take its course. If you feel broken, give yourself a chance to rest and get stronger, devote more time to your family, or visit friends you haven't seen for a long time. All important issues are best dealt with with a cool head, so in this case, time is an excellent doctor.
What is freedom?
If it happens that you have lost everything, find the strength in yourself to start life from scratch. You should not look for advice on how to start all over again until you are internally ready for a new one. Try to open yourself up from a completely different angle, if you were a creepy pedant before, try to take everything a little easier. Feel like a free person and focus only on your own desires. Ideally, if you decide to start everything from scratch, you can move to another city or even change the country, perhaps you have always dreamed of living near the lake in your personal home, but your former life did not let you go, now you have had this chance, and not it is worth letting go. Believe and hope only for the best, there is always a white one behind the black streak of failures, and your life is no exception.
Chuck Palahniuk was one of the first to challenge post-industrial society and vividly expressed his protest on behalf of the impersonal hero-storyteller in the novel "Fight Club". He made it clear that the "American Dream" is nothing more than the result of moral decay, and proposed to overcome it with the help of an underground organization, which gave the title to the book. The novel's story of willpower, which is based on the knowledge of the male alter-ego, was controversially received by critics and the public, but nevertheless became a cult work of the 90s.
Interestingly, this year the world expects the continuation of the story - "Fight Club 2", designed in the form of comics. The first of 10 graphic editions will be released in the US in May 2015. The date of the Russian presentation is not yet known, but fans of the book and its adaptation with Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter in the lead roles - including us - are looking forward to the continuation of the story.
But Chuck Palahniuk's contribution to literature is not only Fight Club, but also the novels Suffocation, Survivor, Invisible Men, Lullaby, Diary and a dozen other books that are read all over the world. For the birthday of the writer, we have collected 15 of our favorite quotes from his works and their adaptations that fans know by heart.
Only by losing everything to the end, we gain freedom. Fight club
This is freedom. When you lose all hope. Fight club
People are slaves to their things. What you have eventually has you and becomes your master. Fight club
For generations after generations, people work in the jobs they hate just to be able to buy what they don't need Fight Club
Most often, people leave a small city to dream of returning there. Others stay to dream of leaving there. Rant: Biography of Buster Casey
People do that, yes: they turn things into people, and people into things. Ghosts
When we don't know whom to hate, self-hatred arises in us. Invisible
You tell yourself that you love a person, but in fact you only use him. We constantly mistake something else for love. Invisible
I just want to be needed by someone. Necessary and necessary. I need someone to whom I could give all of myself - all my free time, all my attention and care. Someone addicted to me. Mutual dependence. Suffocation
As if you almost have to die to be loved. As if you have to hang on the very edge to be saved. Suffocation
Why are we all so primitive? I mean, guys. As soon as a woman undresses, we are ready to give her the last money. Suffocation
That's how people are. Everyone needs someone to hold his hand. For someone to console him. He promised that everything would be fine. Survivor
I still want to think that the world is getting better. Although I know not. I still want people around me to become better, although I know that this will never happen. And I still want to think that I can do something to make people and the world a better place.... Survivor
We love tragedy. We love conflict. We need the Devil, and if the Devil is not there, we create him ourselves. Ghosts
We all will die. The goal is not to live forever, the goal is to create a thing that will live. Diary
ABOUT CHAKA POLANICA'S PHASE "ONLY LOSING EVERYTHING TO THE END, WE WILL FIND FREEDOM"
Sergey E. (my former student):
I would like to know your opinion on the phrase of Chuck Palahniuk from the popular book "Fight Club": "Only by losing everything to the end, we gain freedom."
How loyal does she seem to you? It is very similar to the phrase of the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: "You will gain lightness when you get rid of attachment to what you have. You gain freedom of movement when you lose connection with the one who gave birth to you."
Seryozha! I will disappoint you. Polanik's phrase belongs to the category of paradoxical statements that became very fashionable in the twentieth century. I have a bad attitude towards them and even wrote a book "Paradoxes and Paradoxical Thinking" with the subtitle "The absurdity and idiocy of Paradoxical Thinking." It is available on my website in the section "Books, manuscripts ..."
Palahniuk's phrase reminds me of the phrase "Free, finally free!", Said about the murdered Martin Luther King, a fighter for the rights of blacks.
If it is accurately translated into Russian, then, on the one hand, it is ordinary and, on the other, absurd. For a long time already (remember, at least the Cynics of Ancient Greece), some people believed that the less we have (things, knowledge, desires), the more free and happy. Here freedom is equated with independence. After all, the fewer things and desires we have, the more independent from them. On the one hand, it seems logical.
On the other hand, if freedom was only in independence, then we would be the most free, being dead. After all, the dead do not want anything and do not have anything. Yes, independence is an important characteristic of freedom, but not the only one! It is moderated and supplemented by another, positive, characteristic of freedom, which is expressed in the possibility of choice, in independence, in the ability to follow one's desires, in the ability to achieve one's goals, etc.
In freedom, there is a certain dialectic of independence and dependence. Only independence - the emptiness of nothingness, homelessness, death. Only addiction is slavery. It is from the combination of these polar opposite principles that freedom arises.
Other, oriental sayings are also one-sided and therefore false, like the first.
This focus on understanding freedom as the absence or severance of connection with anything or someone is phenomenally idiotic. There is a connection and a connection. There is a bond that deprives us of freedom, and there is a bond that alone makes us free.
How many, however, stupid sayings roam the earth! And you young people are caught by their glitter, like moths flying into a fire.
_____________________
Maybe the translation from Chinese is not quite accurate ?! In a relative sense, Lao Tzu's statement is correct. Indeed, in some cases, breaking the bond-dependence means freedom, greater freedom.
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The following question was asked on the site [email protected]:
Freedom is when you have nothing to do with the world in which you are?
http://otvet.mail.ru/question/76934991/?point=2
MY ANSWER
The question is incorrect. Freedom, in short, is the POSSIBILITY OF CHOICE, moreover, not just any, but one that leads to a new possibility of choice. Freedom is a complex interweaving of dependence and independence, limitations and going beyond limitations. To think that freedom is only independence (from something) is stupidity. There are dependencies that provide greater freedom., I.e. more choice. For example, the relationship between husband and wife. Outside of this interdependence, you cannot ensure a full-fledged continuation of the race, the prolongation of life in time, and, therefore, the ability to continue the opportunity to choose. Freedom, like life in general, has its own framework, limitations, its own measure. To think that freedom is a dimensionless quantity, is not limited by anything, means to understand nothing about it.