There's an old saying: 'No piece of writing is ever finished, it's just abandoned.' But my own rule is: No piece of work is done until you want to kill everyone involved in the publishing process, especially yourself.
Chuck PalahniukRead
A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Perfection is fleeting and rare, but even a brief moment of it is valuable.
This quote suggests that achieving perfection is a challenging and often unrealistic goal. However, when one does experience a moment of true perfection, even if it lasts only a minute, that experience holds significant worth and validates the efforts taken to reach it.
Themes
PerfectionEffortValueMomentExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about the value of striving for excellence despite the odds.
More from Chuck Palahniuk
All quotes βGriping isn't the same as creating something. Rebelling isn't rebuilding. Ridiculing isn't replacing. We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.
Chuck PalahniukRead
If we can forgive whatβs been done to us... If we can forgive what weβve done to others... If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being villains or victims. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.
Chuck PalahniukRead
We're all trapped. It's always 1734. All of us, we're stuck in the same time capsule, the same as those television shows where the same people are marooned on the same desert island for thirty seasons and never age or escape. They just wear more makeup. In a creepy way, those shows are maybe too authentic.
Chuck PalahniukRead
One thing I really envy about my friends who have kids is that as their children develop, they're able to revisit their own developmental stages and recognise themselves and undo a lot of things they decided.
Chuck PalahniukRead
If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can.
Chuck PalahniukRead
Similar quotes
I've never been one for keeping a journal, so my songs were my journals. They allowed me to express my feelings and let people know what was going on with me. I knew that somebody would relate.
Janet JacksonRead
A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
Orson WellesRead
Movie-wise, there is nothing I wouldn't do again. It's not possible to make one perfect movie every time.
Francis Ford CoppolaRead
The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it.
Diana VreelandRead
I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is.
Barbara ChristianRead
For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.
Athol FugardRead