Haunted

Widely(?) regarded as Chuck Palahniuk's worst novel. The beginning of his "horror trilogy," which was succeeded by both Diary and this year's Rant.


"The world is silent except for the heartbeat in my ears."

"All those cures and remedies that claim to be 100-percent natural ingredients, therefore 100-percent safe, Angelique laughs. She says, Cyanide is natural. So is arsenic."

"The air will always be too filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse to not live your life."

"Really, he says, he should write a goddamn book. That's the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell."

"'She was damn ugly,' he says, 'when she died.'"
"What you have to love about drinking is, every swallow is an irrevocable decision. You charging ahead, in control of the game. It's the same with pills, sedatives and painkillers, every swallow is a definite step down some road."

"'A journalist has a right.../ ... and a duty, to destroy/ those golden calves he helps create.'"

"Good writing means you take the regular facts and deliver them in a sexy way."

"Leave it to an American to take something too far."

"'Every apostle or disciple,' Mrs. Clark says, 'as much as they're running to follow their savior--they're running just as hard to escape something else.'"

"Imagine being alive for thousands of years and you keep making the same stupid mistake. Just for thousands of years you keep going to bars and clubs and you think you're having a great time. You imagine you're the center of attention. You have a husband you think is handsome. You think you're both such entirely hot shit."

"The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people."

"You can't unfuck a kid."

"Some men may only want pictures of naked women. But some women only want a man's dick. Or his sperm. Or his money.
Both sexes have the same problem with intimacy."

"To men, a woman is either a virgin or a slut. A mother or a whore."

"We piss and moan, but we appreciate God kicking us out of Eden."

"'Every breath you take is because something has died.'"

"Kids, she says. When they're little, they believe everything you tell them about the world. As a mother, you're the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. But after they hit some magic age, it's just the opposite. After that, you're either a liar or a fool or a villain."

"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 kid 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.
Telling some stories, Miss Leroy says, is committing suicide."

"You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real."

"When we die, these are the stories still on our lips. The stories we'll only tell strangers, someplace private in the padded cell of midnight. These important stories, we rehearse them for years in our head but never tell. These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost."

"Every night's scattered with them. These wandering people who can't be saved but won't die."

"Everyone needs an audience."

"...I've only ever kissed a dead boy."