This book (and the movie, moreso) had so much hype that I didn’t take it seriously. Finally got around to reading Fight Club, and really enjoyed it. A “fun”, thought-provoking book not to be taken too seriously. I enjoyed both the ideas and the writing style. A nice counterpoint to the improve-and-consume American culture.

= = = = = Quotes = = = = =

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

“A lot of young people try to impress the world and buy too many things,” the doorman said.

The doorman leaned into my shoulder and said, “A lot of young people don’t know what they really want.”

“If you don’t know what you want,” the doorman said, “you end up with a lot you don’t.”

The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

I just don’t want to die without a few scars, I say. It’s nothing anymore to have a beautiful stock body. You see those cars that are completely stock cherry, right out of a dealer’s showroom in 1955, I always think, what a waste.

The second rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

That’s the third rule in fight club, when someone says stop, or goes limp, even if he’s just faking it, the fight is over.

Only two guys to a fight. One fight at a time. They fight without shirts or shoes. The fights go on as long as they have to. Those are the other rules of fight club.

After a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down. Nothing can piss you off. Your word is law, and if other people break that law or question you, even that doesn’t piss you off.

Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer.

Maybe self-destruction is the answer.

What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women.

“And the seventh rule,” Tyler yells, “is if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.”

I’m a thirty-year-old boy, and I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer I need.

but Tyler explained it all, about not wanting to die without any scars, about being tired of watching only professionals fight, and wanting to know more about himself. About self-destruction. At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.

After a few fights, you’re afraid a lot less.

Only after disaster can we be resurrected. “It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, “that you’re free to do anything.”

“Getting fired,” Tyler says, “is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we’d quit treading water and do something with our lives.”

Even a week after fight club, you’ve got no problem driving inside the speed limit. Maybe you’ve been passing black shit, internal injuries, for two days, but you are so cool. Other cars drive around you. Cars tailgate. You get the finger from other drivers. Total strangers hate you. It’s absolutely nothing personal. After fight club, you’re so relaxed, you just cannot care. You don’t even turn the radio on.

The mechanic yells out the window, “As long as you’re at fight club, you’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself.”

I am stupid, and all I do is want and need things. My tiny life. My little shit job. My Swedish furniture.

“You had a near-life experience,”

“I see the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived,” he says, his face outlined against the stars in the driver’s window, “and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables.”

I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not. I’m not Tyler Durden. “But you are, Tyler,” Marla says.

On a long enough time line, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero.

How everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you’re proud of will end up as trash.

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.