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
I am opposed to looking upon logic as a kind of game. ... One might think that it is a matter of choice or convention which logic one adopts. I disagree with this view.
Karl PopperRead
'Pretty' is most often synonymous with being thin, white, able-bodied, and cis, and the closer you are to those ideals, the more often you will be labeled pretty - and benefit from that prettiness.
Janet MockRead
All things are manifestations of one thing only.
Paulo CoelhoRead
Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom - and lakes die.
Gil Scott-HeronRead
Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life.
Karl BarthRead