Literary Birthday – 21 February – Chuck Palahniuk

Happy Birthday, Chuck Palahniuk, born 21 February 1962.

12 Quotes on Writing and Life

1. It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It’s a lot more difficult to perform one.
2. I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That’s the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.
3. Your handwriting. The way you walk. Which china pattern you choose. It’s all giving you away. Everything you do shows your hand. Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary.
4. I try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.
5. What I’m always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of camp fires and fireplaces – the ghost stories that engaged us.
6. You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.
7. You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.
8. I always thought I’d write when I retired – when I turned 65. But by the time I was 33, to tell you the truth, I was a little bored with drugs and sex, and I thought I’d do the writing thing.
9. 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.
10. I write compulsively. I’ve got so many ideas, and I love to do it so much, I can’t not do it. I write the way some people do drugs.
11. Every time I write something, I think, this is the most offensive thing I will ever write. But no. I always surprise myself.
12. All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.

Chuck Palahniuk is an American novelist. He describes his work as ‘transgressional fiction’. He is best known as the author of the award-winning novel Fight Club, which also was made into a feature film. His other novels include Diary, Lullaby, and Invisible Monsters.

Read: 13 Writing Tips From Chuck Palahniuk

by Amanda Patterson

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