"The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people. And maybe the reason vampires dont die is because they can never see themselves in photographs or mirrors."
Charles Michael Palahniuk is an American novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adult coloring books, as well as several short stories. His first published novel was Fight Club, which was adapted into a film of the same title.
"How sweet! You still believe in death... thats just so... quaint. Well, sorry to pop your death bubble, but theres no such thing. So make the best of things. Any real belief in death is just wishful thinking. Dont waste good drugs on killing yourself. Share them with friends and have a party. Or send them to me."
"Why have I sold out? You think Im supposed to grow old, beating some trite old protest drum that people dont hear anymore? Please; protest is now just a backdrop for a Diesel clothing ad in a slick fashion magazine. My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their world in a different way. Its time — for me, at least — to be clever and seduce people by entertaining them. Ill never be heard if Im always ranting and griping."
"I think theyve always gone on. Ive gotten some irate letters from oldsters saying "We did this in the 1930s. You didnt invent anything." And Im like, "Gramps, you should have put a name on it and sold it, because that’s all I did."
"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."
"The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact. Every play-by-play description on the radio, the home runs and strikeouts, even thats delayed a few minutes. Even live television is postponed a couple seconds. Even Sound and light can only go so fast."
"I havent had a TV in 10 years, and I really dont miss it. Cause its always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television."
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that theres free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
"With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs."
"The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it."
"I should say that when people talk about capitalism its a bit of a joke. Theres no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. Thats right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. Thats very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World."
"I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit."
"We have created a wealthy society with tens of millions of talented, resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens. Bringing these people in — with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources — is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve our problems."
Al Gore