The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangibles, ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That’s the only lasting thing you can create.
Choke
by Chuck Palahniuk
People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become. With the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and addressed and recorded. Nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. On a rollercoaster. At a movie. Still, it would always be that kind of faux excitement. You know the dinosaurs aren’t going to eat the kids. The test audiences have outvoted any chance of even a major faux disaster. And because there’s no possibility of real disaster, real risk, we’re left with no chance of real salvation. Real elation. Real excitement. Joy. Discovery. Invention.
Charles Michael “Chuck” Palahniuk (born February 21, 1962) is an American novelist and freelance journalist, who describes his work as transgressional fiction.
He is most well known as the author of the award-winning novel Fight Club, which also was made into a feature film. He maintains homes in the states of Oregon and Washington.