Invisible Monsters
“When you understand that what you’re telling is just a story. It isn’t happening anymore. When you realize the story you’re telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we’ll figure out who you’re going to be.”
I recently read Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. His novels are usually pretty disturbing and thought provoking (Fight Club, anyone?) and I could find so many quotes from this book that are chilling and awesome. What I love about this quote is that it can apply to almost anything. In the book, this is referring to the main character being shot in the face, leaving her completely mutilated (did I mention she was also a model?). When I read it, though, I thought, “words! It’s all just words. What even matters?” I started thinking about how many stories from my past still feel like they’re relevant. Are they? Probably not.
That’s a weird concept. This idea of physically crumbling up your past and tossing it in the trash is unsettling because it gets you thinking, “is it really that easy?” It usually isn’t; the past has a tendency to follow you around. But if you can think of it as the past and nothing more, then you can finally be done with it. Good writing has a way of changing the way you think. It stops your mind right in its tracks. For me, this quote does just that.
2 responses so far
Wow that really is a thought provoking quote! I really had to stop for a moment and think about what it means. The way in which you related it to throwing away your past made me think even more about all the times I’ve done that. It’s almost as if now we’re in the present and the past is past. There’s nothing we could do to change it and no matter what happened it brought us here, to where we are now. That’s what makes it easy for me to forget it so easily. Just like a great novel can be broken down to words, your entire past could just become memories. It’s a scary thought sometimes but it’s definitely something that a lot of people tend to do.
So I read Fight Club and I loved it, but I was iffy about reading Invisible Monsters. But if it’s all this abstract and thought-provoking, I think I’ll give it a shot. the quote you chose touches upon that surreal aspect of story-telling and reliving a moment through memory. But that’s the thing — why relive something when you could just…live? Very profound.