Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk

"'You don't know exactly when the fuel will run out. There's always the chance you could die right in the middle of your life story.'
And I yelled, So what else is new?
And, Tell me something I don't know."
(p. 285)

"My parents bought me the first one to teach me about loving and caring for another living breathing creature of God. Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground."
(p. 277)

"People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone."
(p. 275)

"Their way, everything in your life turns into an item on a list. Something to accomplish. You get to see how your life looks flattened out.
The shortest distance between two points is a time line, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life.
Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list."
(p. 269)

"For tear stains in a pillow case, treat them the same way you would a perspiration stain. Dissolve five aspirin in water and daub the stain until it's gone. Even if there's a mascara stain, the problem's solved.
If you could call it solved."
(p. 263)

"The look I'm going for is natural. Real. The look I'm after is, raw material. Not desperate and needy, but ripe with potential. Not hungry. Sure, I want to look like I'm worth the effort. Washed but not ironed. Clean but not polished. Confident but humble.
Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine."
(p. 219)

"The truth is you can be orphaned again and again and again.
The truth is you will be.
And the secret is, this will hurt less and less each time until you can't feel a thing.
Trust me on this."
(p. 162)

"Everything the agent's been telling me makes perfect sense. For instance, if Jesus Christ had died in prison, with no one watching and with no one there to mourn or torture him, would we be saved?
With all due respect.
According to the agent, the biggest factor that makes you a saint is the amount of press coverage you get."
(p. 152)

"Around the one hundred and fifth floor, you can't believe you're the slave to this body, this big baby. You have to keep it fed and put it to bed and take it to the bathroom. You can't believe we haven't invented something better. Something not so needy. Not so time-consuming."
(p. 151)

"It's only in drugs and death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling"
(p. 151)

"Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished."
(p. 150)

"The agent's yelling that no matter how great you look, your body is just something you wear to accept your academy award.
Your hand is just so you can hold your Nobel Prize.
Your lips are only there for you to air-kiss a talk show host.
And you might as well look great."
(p. 150)

"Reality means you live until you die," the agent says. "The real truth is nobody wants reality." (p. 142)

""We all watch the same television programs," the mouth says. "We all hear the same things on the radio, we all repeat the same talk to each other. There are no surprises left. There's just more of the same. Reruns."
Inside the hole, the red lips say, "We all grew up with the same television shows. It's like we all have the same artificial memory implants. We remember almost none of our real childhoods, but we remember everything that happened to sitcom families. We have the same basic goals. We all have the same fears."
...
"The big question people ask isn't 'What's the nature of existence?'" the mouth says. "The big question people ask is 'What's that from?'
(p. 111-110)

***i just noticed the pages are numbered backwards, so you know how many you have left instead of how far you've gone. interesting. especially since the whole book is about death.***