"It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die. On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero."
This quote, from the Narrator, betrays his nihilistic view of life. In order to sleep at night, he needs to cry and lose himself in his despair. Only by letting go of any hope can he rest. In the Narrator's worldview, we are all destined to die and there is nothing any of us can do about it. This attitude also suggests that the Narrator has fallen into a cycle of self-pity. While conveniently also re-affirming his own worldview, it also prevents him from moving out of this mindset.
"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?"
The Narrator states this at several times in the book, foreshadowing the book's central revelation: that the Narrator and Tyler Durden are the same person. However, the question also deals centrally with the issue of identity. How well do we know ourselves? Do we really know who we are? Who we want to be? The Narrator creates the persona of Tyler Durden to solve the problems in his life and to pursue Marla Singer. While he is successful in doing this, he also loses control of his own life. His identity becomes threatened, something that could be completely overtaken by Tyler's persona.
"One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection."
The Narrator says this after watching Tyler assemble his shadow sculpture on the beach. The sculpture forms a shadow depicting a human hand. Tyler asks the Narrator what time it is when he completes the sculpture, so that he will know when the shadow is just right to be viewed.
Tyler's analogy treats perfection as a double-edged sword. On one hand, one can pursue perfection in the hope of achieving it, if only for a brief moment. On the other, this makes perfection a fleeting goal. Perfection is too elusive. Perfection is also the end point. If one were to achieve it, what would they do after that?
"Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."
The Narrator says this while discussing the furniture and contents of his condominium. In the consumer culture existence of the Narrator's life, the objects he buys are little more than consolation prizes. They do not make him feel happy or give him a sense of accomplishment. They merely demonstrate his buying power. He has not made any of these objects himself. In order to sustain this illusion of happiness and completeness, the Narrator must continue working a job or jobs he finds repulsive. He will need money to continue to buy objects such as these. They begin to form a symbolic prison in which he has locked himself.
"Who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world. Even if you told the kid in the copy center that he had a good fight, you wouldn't be talking to the same man."
The Narrator is discussing the mental divide between the "real" world and the world of fight club. In the real world, people are recognized for their jobs and socially-accepted accomplishments. In fight club, these same men are stripped to their core to engage in fights. Who they really are inside is brought forward. When they leave fight club to return to the world, these revelations must be put aside to once again blend in with the greater society.
"Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer.
Tyler never knew his father.
Maybe self-destruction is the answer."
Tyler's philosophy once again visits the idea of perfection as an empty goal. The inclusion of the line "Tyler never knew his father" is of importance as it is also a central theme that Palahniuk returns to several times in the novel. Tyler and the Narrator see themselves as rejected from the time of their birth by their own fathers, figures who probably never really wanted them in the first place. In order to move beyond this internal strife and sense of rejection, Tyler proposes getting to the core of yourself (the 'self-destruction') to discover who you really are and then building yourself back up.
"You aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club. When it's you and one other guy under that one light in the middle of all those watching. Fight club isn't about winning or losing fights."
The Narrator's excitement over fight club encapsulates his equally felt disappointment with the mundane real world. In his job and his personal life, the Narrator moves in an almost zombie-like state, feeling little sense of accomplishment or connection with his fellow human beings. Fight club makes him feel alive because it tests him in a way the real world does not. He also feels like he is part of a community, something larger than himself. While there is no ultimate goal to fight club, it gives these men a sense of purpose and control over their lives.
"'It's only after you've lost everything," Tyler says, "that you're free to do anything.'"
Tyler's proclamation to the Narrator while they are making soap is part of his fascination with "hitting rock bottom." While the term in everyday parlance suggests a terrible experience, it is inextricably tied to a sense of moral or financial bottom. In Tyler's use of the term, he means it more as reaching the absolute self. Rock bottom is one's zero point, their pure being. Once they have stripped away everything: their possessions, thoughts, wants, and desires, they become truly free.
"'You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic mater as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.'"
This is a mantra that is recited by the Space Monkeys to one another as part of Tyler's philosophy. As part of their indoctrination, Tyler seeks to remove any sense of individuality from these men and their lives. Fight club was founded to help these men find their true selves. Project Mayhem strips them of this so that the men will willingly submit to Tyler and never question his methods or motivations. This would be much easier if each of the men already saw themselves as plain and unremarkable, ironically how they had already felt about themselves before they joined fight club.
"'If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?'"
Spoken by the mechanic to the Narrator during their drive to the medical waste dump, the mechanic summarizes Tyler's philosophy regarding his issues with his father. Tyler simultaneously attacks his unreliable father, but also includes the religious undertones of his upbringing and heritage. God, in Tyler's universe, is not a reliable or benevolent figure. In his opinion, God is indifferent to the human condition. Tyler sees the need to turn to God much as how a child turns to his or her parents for help or permission. God then becomes an impedance to progress. As long as human beings feel they need the blessings of an indifferent creator, Tyler feels, they cannot truly move forward.
"'We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact,' Tyler said. 'So don't fuck with us.'"
Tyler speaks these lines to the Seattle police commissioner. His message is that he and the members of Project Mayhem have nothing to lose. The commissioner and the elite members of society he answers to have everything to lose. Tyler's generation feel that they were raised to believe that they would achieve greatness inherently. Having finally realized that the world does not really operate like that, they feel cheated and angry. The lives they had planned were not brought to fruition, so they have nothing to lose whatsoever. Despite this, they are the people who work jobs so that the normal order of the world can continue: they cook meals, delivery goods, take away the garbage, and drive taxis. Without them, the world could not operate. The world needs them more than it needs another police commissioner.
