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
There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Jamais vu is the experience of feeling unfamiliarity in familiar situations.
In this quote, Chuck Palahniuk introduces the concept of 'jamais vu', which is the opposite of 'déjà vu'. While 'déjà vu' refers to the sensation of having experienced something before, 'jamais vu' describes the disorienting feeling of encountering the same person or place repeatedly, yet perceiving them as entirely new and unfamiliar. This reflects on the nature of human experience, highlighting how our perceptions can shift and how familiarity can paradoxically feel new.
Themes
Jamais VuFamiliarityStrangerPerceptionHuman Experience
In practice
Example use cases
You could use this quote in a discussion about memory and perception.
More from Chuck Palahniuk
All quotes →Griping 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 what’s been done to us... If we can forgive what we’ve 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
Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.
Noam ChomskyRead
There's no difference between what is seen and the mind that sees it.
Yongey Mingyur RinpocheRead
We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very, very improbable.
Richard DawkinsRead
A government capable of controlling the whole, and bringing its force to a point, is one of the prerequisites for national liberty. We combine in society, with an expectation to have our persons and properties defended against unreasonable exactions either at home or abroad.
Oliver EllsworthRead
And whereas this House desires to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil.
Abraham LincolnRead
There is a new venue for theory, necessarily impure, where it emerges in and as the very event of cultural translation. This is not the displacement of theory by historicism, nor a simple historicization of theory that exposes the contingent limits of its more generalizable claims.
Judith ButlerRead