#8. IN FIGHT
TYLER: If you could fight anyone, who would you fight?
JACK: I'd fight my boss, probably.
TYLER: Really?
JACK: Yeah, why? Who would you fight?
TYLER: I'd fight my dad.
JACK: I don't know my dad. I mean, I know him, but... He left when I was like, six years old. Married another woman, had some other kids. He did this every six years. He changes city and starts a new family.
TYLER: Fucker's setting up franchises. My father never went to college, so it was really important that I go.
JACK: That sounds familiar.
TYLER: So I graduate. Call him up long distance and asked, " Dad,now what?" He says, "Get a job."
JACK: Same here.
TYLER: Now, I am twenty-five. Make my yearly call again. And asked, "Now what?" He said, "I don't know. Get married."
JACK: You can't get married. I am thirty year old boy.
TYLER: We're generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is the answer we really need.
JACK: Most of the week, we were Ozzie and Harriet.
JACK: But every Saturday night night we were finding something out: we were finding out, more and more, that we were not alone.
JACK: It used to be that when I came home angry or depressed. I'd just clean my condo. Polish my Scandinavian furniture. I should have been looking for a new condo or haggling with my insurance company/ I should have been upset about my nice flaming little shit. But I wasn't.
WALTER The basic premise of cybernetting any office is making things more efficient.
JACK: Monday mornings I just thought about next week.
BOSS: Can I get the icon in cornflower blue?
WALTER: Absolutely. Efficiency is priority no.1, people. Because waste is a thief. I showed this to my man here. you liked it, didn't you?
JACK: You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick. It was right in everyone's face. Tyler and I just made it visible. It was on the tip of everyone's tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.
JACK: Every week Tyler gave a rules that he and I decided
TYLER: Gentlemen! Welcome to Fight Club.
TYLER: The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about Fight Club. The second rule of fight club is you don't talk about Fight Club. The third rule of fight club is when someone yells stop, goes limp,taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule. Only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: no shirts, no shoes. Seventh rule: fights go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.
JACK: This kid from work, Ricky, couldn't remember whether you ordered pens with blue ink or black.
JACK: But Ricky was a god for ten minutes last week when he trounced the maitre d' of a local food court.
JACK: Sometimes all you could hear were flat, hard packing sounds over the yelling. O r the wet choke when someone caught their breath and sprayed...
JACK: You weren't alive anywhere like you were there. But Fight Club only exists in the hours between when Fight Club starts and ends. Even if I could tell someone they had a good fight, I wouldn't be talking to the same man. Who you were in fight club is not who you were in the rest of the world.
JACK: A guy came to Fight Club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood.
JACK: If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight?
TYLER: Alive or dead?
JACK: Doesn't matter. Who'd be tough?
TYLER: Hemingway. You?
JACK: Shatner. I'd fight William Shatner.
JACK: We all started seeing things differently. Everywhere we went, we were sizing things up. I felt sorry for guys packed into gyms, trying to look like Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger said they should.
TYLER: Is that a man looks like? Self-improvement is masturbation. Now, self-destruction...
TYLER: Excuse me.
JACK: Fight club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words.
They hysterical shouting was in tongues, like at a Pentecostal church.
MAN: Is that it?
JACK: Stop!
JACK: When the fight was over, nothing was solved. But nothing mattered.
TYLER:Cool.
JACK: Afterwards, we all felt saved.
OPPONENT: Hey, man. How about next week?
JACK: Look at me. How about next month?
TYLER: Irvine, you're in the middle. New guy, you too.
JACK: Sometimes. Tyler spoke to me.
TYLER: He fell down some stairs.
JACK: I fell down some stairs.
JACK: Fight club became the reason to cut your hair short and trim your fingernails.
TYLER: OK. Any historical figure.
JACK: I'd fight Ghandi.
TYLER Good answer.
JACK: How about you?
TYLER: Lincoln.
JACK: Lincoln?
TYLER: Big guy, big reach. Skinny guys fight till they're burger.
JACK: Fuck.
TYLER: Hey, even the Mona Lisa's falling apart.
JACK: Hello?
MARLA: Where have you been the last few weeks?
JACK: Marla?
JACK: How did you find me?
MARLA: You left a forwarding number. I haven't seen you at any support groups.
JACK: We split'em up. That's the idea. Remember?
MARLA: Yeah, but you haven't been going to yours.
JACK: How do you know?
MARLA: I cheated.
JACK: I found a new one.
MARLA: Really?
JACK: It's for men only.
MARLA: Like a testical thing?
JACK: Look, this is a bad time...
MARLA: I've been going to debtor's anonymous. They're really fucked up people.
JACK: I'm on my way out.
MARLA Me too. I got a stomach full of Xanax. I took what was left of a bottle. It might've been too much.
JACK: Picture Marla Singer throw herself around her crummy apartment.
MARLA: This isn't a for-real suicide thing. This is probably one of those cry-for- help things.
JACK: This could go on for hours. So you're staying in tonight?
MARLA: Do you wanna wait and hear me describe death?
MARLA: Do you want to listen and see if my spirit can use a phone? Have you ever heard a death rattle before?
JACK: Tyler's door was closed. I'd been livivng here two months, and his door was never closed.
JACK: You're not going to believe what I dreamt last night.
MARLA: I can hardly believe anything about last night.
JACK: What are you doing here?
MARLA: What... ?
JACK: This is my house. What are you doing in my house?
MARLA: Fuck you.
TYLER: Oh, you've got some fucked-up friends! I'm telling you. Limber, though. Silly cooze. I come in last night, Phone's off the hook. Guess who's on the other end?
JACK: I already knew the story before he told it to me.