Chuck Palahnuik’s Fight Club.  Is the first book I read in 2014.  Quite frankly, this book and the movie completely blew my mind.

Even if you’ve seen the movie, I highly recommend reading the book. My 99% rule still holds up:  the book is better than the movie.  The great thing is that the movie is true to the book and vice versa.   I must admit, I saw the movie first, and when i read the book, I naturally pictured Edward Norton as the narrator, just as  director David Fincher did.I guess that’s more of a testament to the movie than the book, but I digress. In the front or back cover notes, someone called Fight Club an existentialist novel.  At first, I thought it was a bit of a bold statement, but the experience of reading this book reminded me of the first time I read Albert Camus’s The Stranger.  At that moment, I realized that Fight Club truly is the last great existentialist novel of the 20th century.

Anyway, here are some of my favorite inspirational quotes from Fight Club:

“Anything you’re ever proud of will be thrown away.” (17)

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero.” (17)

“This is how it is with insomnia.  Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy.” (21)
“Losing all hope was freedom.” (22)

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time” (29)

“One minute was enough…a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort” (33)

“If you don’t know what you want…you end up with a lot you don’t.”  (46)

“I just don’t want to die without a few scars.” (48)
“Nothing is static.” (49)

“What you see at Fight Club is a generation of men raised by women.” (50)

“…maybe we have to break everything to make something better of ourselves” (52)
“…the condom is the glass slipper of our generation.” (66)

“It’s only after you’ve lost everything, that you’re free to do anything” (70)

“A man on the street will do anything not to fight.” (119)

“You are not a beautiful snowflake.  You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.” (134).

“If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God.  And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?” (141)

“We are not special.  We are not crap or trash either.  We just are.  We just are, and what happens just happens” (207)