Devon Sampson > Devon's Quotes

“You're always haunted by the idea you're wasting your life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“If we can forgive what has been done to us . . .

If we can forgive what we've done to others . . .

If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being
villians or victims.

Only then can we maybe rescue the world.

But we still sit here, waiting to be saved. While we're
still victims, hoping to be discovered while we suffer.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Most people would never admit it, but they'd been bitching since they were born. As soon as their head popped out into that bright delivery-room light, nothing had been right. Nothing had been as comfortable or felt so good. Just the effort it took to keep your stupid physical body alive, just finding food and cooking it and dishwashing, the keeping warm and bathing and sleeping, the walking and bowel movements and ingrown hairs, it was all getting to be too much work.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“The air will always be to filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“An important part of building a new culture was allowing people to complain about their past. At first, the more they complained, the worse the past would seem. But by venting, people could start to resolve the past. By bitching and bitching and bitching, they could exhaust the drama of their own horror stories. Grow bored. Only then could they accept a new story for their lives. Move forward.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“If there’s any trick to doing a job you hate . . . Mrs. Clark says it’s to find a job you hate even more.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Even if you tell yourself "Today I'm going to drink coffee the wrong way ... from a dirty boot." Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot.

Because you can do nothing wrong. You are always right. Even when you say, "I'm such an idiot, I'm so wrong..." you're right. You're right about being wrong. You're right even when you're an idiot.

No matter how stupid your idea, you're doomed to be right because it's yours.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Some stories, she’d say, the more you tell them, the faster you use them up. Those kind, the drama burns off, and every version, they sound more silly and flat. The other kind of story, it uses you up. The more you tell it, the stronger it gets. Those kind of stories only remind you how stupid you were. Are. Will always be. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Daytime television, you can tell who’s watching by the three kinds of commercials. Either it’s clinics for drying out drunks. Or it’s law firms who want to settle injury suits. Or it’s schools offering mail-order vocational degrees to make you a bookkeeper. A private detective. Or a locksmith. If you’re watching daytime television, this is your new demographic. You’re a drunk. Or a cripple. Or an idiot. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“You are permanent, but this life is not.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“You’re training a new employee,' says Mrs. Clark, 'to take over your boring old job.' When you raise a child.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“People need a monster they can believe in."
A true and horrible enemy. A demon to define themselves against. Otherwise, it's just us versus us.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.”
― Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

“And the fundamental point of all these massively parallel experiments is the same: when a problem reaches a certain level of complexity, formal theory won’t get you nearly as far as an incredibly rapid, systematic process of trial and error.”
― Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure