In Tyler We Trust

Fight club has to be one of my favourite films of all time. I remember watching this when I was a teenager and not really getting it. It's only now that I've "grown up" (by the way, I use that term loosely) that I now understand what Tyler Durden was trying to say. Okay, now I know Tyler was a deranged and self-destructive nutcase… however, you must admit, he did have some pretty cool quotes. Anyway, I leave you with some of my favourites. Enjoy!

“You do the little job you’re trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don’t understand any of it, and then you just die.”

“Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”

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

“You wake up at SeaTac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O’Hare, Dallas Fort Worth. BWI, Pacific, Mountain, Central. Lose an hour. Gain an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbour International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”

“I am smart, capable and, most importantly, I’m free in all the way that you are not.”

“People do it every day. They talk to themselves. They see themselves as they’d like to be.”

“The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue.”

“You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. 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.”

“Do you know what a duvet is? It’s a blanket…Just a blanket. Why do guys like us know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival in the hunter-gatherer sense? No! We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty; these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine. Viagra. Olestra.”

“Fuck Martha Stewart. She’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man! So fuck off with your sofa units and strinne green stripe patterns. I say never be complete. I say stop being perfect. I say let’s evolve. Let the chips fall where they may.”

“How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”

“If you’ve never been in a fight, you wonder. About getting hurt, about what you’re capable of doing against another man.”

“Self-improvement is masturbation. Now Self-destruction…”

“Disaster is a natural part of my evolution toward tragedy and dissolution. I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”

“The first soap was made from heroes’ ashes, like the first monkey shot into space. Without pain or sacrifice we would have nothing.”

“I reject the basic assumption of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions.”

“Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?  You have to consider the possibility that god does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don’t need him! Fuck damnation, fuck redemption. We are God’s unwanted children? So be it!”

“First you have to give up. First, you have to know – not fear – know that some day, you’re gonna die. It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. Congratulations. You’re one step closer to hitting bottom.”

“I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential. And I see it squandered. Goddammit, an entire generation pumping gas, or waiting tables. Slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on TV to believe that one day we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

“You are not you’re job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

“Listen up maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. We are all part of the same compost heap.”

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

“If you were to die, right now, how would you feel about your life?”

“Recycling and speed limits are bullshit. They’re like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.”

“I’d do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa. This is my world, now. This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead.”

“Hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat. It’s not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! Let go!”

“In the world I see, you’re stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of the Rockefeller center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of you life. You’ll climb the thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison in the empty car-pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”