Stranger than Fiction: True Stories

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories by Chuck Palahniuk

rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Page 220:] ...brinksmanship, the tendency to leave things until the last moment, to imbue them with more drama and stress and appear the hero by racing the clock.

"Where I was born," Georgia O'Keefe used to say, "and where and how I have lived is unimportant."

She said, "It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of any interest."

[Pages 156-157:] People who come to interview (Marilyn) Manson, his publicist asks that they not publish the fact that he stands whenever a woman enters or leaves the room. After his father was disabled with a back injury, Manson bought his parents a home in California and supports them. When checking into hotels, he uses the name "Patrick Bateman" the serial-killing character from Bret Ellis's novel American Psycho.

[Page 56:] As a white man, you can live your whole life never not fitting in. You never walk into a jewelry store that sees only your black skin. You never walk into a bar that sees only your boobs. To be Whitie is to be wallpaper...

[Pages 31-32:] ...Heidegger pointed out how human beings tend to look at the world as a standing stock of material, ready for us to use. As inventory to be processed into something more valuable...he called this world of raw natural resources bestand. It seems inevitable that people without access to natural bestand, such as oil wells or diamond mines, that they'd turn to the only inventory they do have—their lives.