At a magazine, everything you do is edited by a bunch of people, by committee, and a lot of them are, were, or think of themselves as writers. Part of that is because magazines worry about their voice.
Chuck KlostermanI like storms. I would say I actively like stormy weather. I would not be afraid of them. I think that if I had not pursued journalism, I think storm-chasing would've been a really fun career.
Chuck KlostermanI was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story.
Chuck KlostermanAmericans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because weโre simultaneously cowardly and arrogant. We donโt know the answers, so we assume they must not exist. But they do exist. They are unclear and/or unfathomable, but theyโre out there. Andโperhaps surprisinglyโthe only way to find those answers is to study NBA playoff games that happened twenty years ago. For all practical purposes, the voice of Brent Musburger was the pen of Ayn Rand.
Chuck KlostermanThe only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don't care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell you everything that doesn't matter to anyone who isn't him. He will describe paradoxical details and share deeply personal anecdotes, and it will all be autobiography; he will simply be explaining who he is by discussing something completely unrelated to his life.
Chuck KlostermanEvery possible opinion is authored about everything. What's going to eventually happen is someone will look back on this period and have to sift through it. The overwhelming majority of those opinions are going to be ignored, because if every opinion is being offered, really no opinion is being offered.
Chuck Klosterman