Chuck Klosterman Quotes

If someone breaks your heart, just punch them in the face. Oh sure, it seems obvious now, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't think of it when it's relevant. Seriously, punch them in the face and go get some ice cream.

As an adult, the only people who care about horror movies are academics. No one loves to talk about horror films more than somebody with a Ph.D. in cultural studies at a university.

I think people feel very comfortable reviewing the idea of me, as opposed to what I've actually written. Most of the time, when people write about one of my books, they're really just writing about what they think I may or may not represent, as sort of this abstract entity. Is that unfair? Not really. If I put myself in this position where I'm going to kind of weave elements of memoir into almost everything, well, I suppose that's going to happen.

I 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.

If Donald Trump loses badly, it could mean the end of the GOP as one of the two significant parties.

It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive.

If I knew I was going to die at a specific moment in the future, it would be nice to be able to control what song I was listening to; this is why I always bring my iPod on airplanes.

Life is rarely about what happened; it's mostly about what we think happened.

People can demand someone they've never met be arrested and thrown in jail forever because they know it's never going to happen and they're never going to see this person.

I cannot imagine the type of sinister fiend who would be against the library. A library essentially says, 'Look, here is some free information that will enrich your life. Read it on your own time. I trust that you will bring it back when you are finished.' It might be the most civilized, forward-thinking institution in America. Perhaps the only one, in fact.

When I'm walking around, I'm usually drinking pop, so I can't have a mask on. That's why I couldn't be a surgeon.

If you’re the type of person who wants to associate exclusively with those who perfectly mirror your own ethical worldview, you’re reducing significantly the scope of your potential life experience.

Soccer is like punk rock: The product is not necessarily terrible. The problem is the fan base.

Who Am I? Or (Perhaps More Accurately) Who Else Could Be Me?

In the Far East, it's very normal for people to wear masks in flu season. I don't know if I'd ever do that, though, because I don't like having things on my face.

Women intrinsically understand human dynamics, and that makes them unstoppable. Unfortunately, the average man is less adroit at fostering such rivalries, which is why most men remain average; males are better at hating things that can't hate them back (e.g., lawnmowers, cats, the Denver Broncos, et cetera). They don't see the big picture.

By now, everyone I know is one of seven strangers, inevitably hoping to represent a predefined demographic and always failing horribly. The Read World is the real world is The Real World is the read world. It’s the same true story, even when it isn’t.

I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and trying to rewrite it.

Even eternally free people are enslaved by the process of living.

The most wretched people in the world are those who tell you they like every kind of music 'except country.' People who say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time.

Why don't I like crowds? I suppose the worst possible thing I could say is that I don't like people, and that crowds are just collections of people. That seems like a very nihilistic way to look at the world.

I was a teenager in the '80s - and maybe I'm wrong about this - but it seemed like a bad era for movies that were scary. It was really the height of movies that were disgusting.

Nine Inch Nails were the best and most popular industrial band of all time; as a consequence, industrial purists usually assert that Nine Inch Nails aren't an industrial band at all (this is a counterintuitive phenomenon that tends to occur with purists from all subcultures, musical or otherwise).

The things he did on purpose were usually no different from the mistakes he made by accident.

Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.

You can't go into the office and be a jerk. You can't yell at your kids or your wife or your husband for no reason. That makes you a terrible person.

The deeper reality is that I’m not sure if what I do is real. I usually believe that I’m certain about how I feel, but that seems naive. How do we know how we feel?…There is almost certainly a constructed schism between (a) how I feel, and (b) how I think I feel. There’s probably a third level, too—how I want to think I feel.

If I basically view criticism as sort of an interesting form of writing about oneself, an interesting form of autobiography, then I don't feel any pressure to have any kind of authoritative, universal voice. That kind of thing has never interested me.

When Arthur Schlesinger Sr. pioneered the 'presidential greatness poll' in 1948, the top five were Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jefferson. Only Wilson appears to be seriously fading, probably because his support for the World War I-era Sedition Act now seems outrageous; in this analogy, Woodrow is like the Doors and the Sedition Act is Oliver Stone.

The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writers main motivation is to become friends with the band. Theyre not really journalists; theyre people who want to be involved in rock and roll.

Everyone knows history is written by the winners, but that cliche misses a crucial detail: Over time, the winners are always the progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving (and social evolution inevitably dovetails with the agenda of those who see change as an abstract positive). It might take seventy years, but it always happens eventually. Serious historians are, almost without exception, self-styled progressives. Radical views--even the awful ones--improve with age.

Every time I learn the truth about something, I’m disappointed

Sometimes I wonder what will be the air conditioning of my dying days. What thing will they add that will make it impossible to be uncomfortable? Because I do assume that as an old person, I will be very comfortable. There will be something - a drug or some way to impact the air around me - that when I relax, I'm gonna feel great. So I do look forward to that.

Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they're honest about everything.

In some ways, Halloween is much easier for women. They can just dress as sluts, and it's kind of a costume, if they never do any other time.

If you stare long enough at anything, you will start to find similarities. The word “coincidence” exists in order to stop people from seeing meaning where none exists.

I remember saying things, but I have no idea what was said. It was generally a friendly conversation.” —Associated Press reporter Jack Sullivan, attempting to recount a 3 A.M. exchange we had at a dinner party and inadvertently describing the past ten years of my life.

[On political correctness:] Any intended message mattered less than the received message, and every received message could be interpreted in whatever way the receiver wanted.

What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive. It's really hard to do a literary reproduction of what makes you happy. That's what I try to do. If nothing else, it seems like there's enough people out there telling the world what isn't cool, or what's terrible, or what's depressing. I think there's an element of cynicism in my writing, but I'm an optimistic cynic.

It is very easy for me to imagine in 200 years, people looking back at chemotherapy as proof that people of the 20th century were insane and just morons.

Mostly, we argued about who which of us was better at arguing, and particularly about who had won the previous argument.

Sometimes I think that the amount of time you live on earth is just an inverse reflection of how good you were in a previous existence. For example, infants who die from SIDs were actually great people when they were alive for real, so they get to go to heaven after a mere five weeks in purgatory. Meanwhile anyone Willard Scott ever congratulated for turning one hundred two was obviously a terrible individual who had many many previous sins to pay for and had to spend a century in his or her own unknown purgatory even though the person seemed perfectly wholesome in this particular world.

We assume that all statements must be mild inversions of the truth, because it's too weird to imagine people who aren't casually lying, pretty much all the time.

It might sound chauvinistic, but there is a sad reality in rock music: Bands who depend on support from females inevitably crash and burn.

The only people who think the Internet is a calamity are people whose lives have been hurt by it; the only people who insist the Internet is wonderful are those who need it to give their life meaning.

Without a soundtrack, human interaction is meaningless.

Texting has become my favorite way to communicate. I feel like many of my relationships are based in this, because in a sense it feels the closest to actual conversation that isn't the phone.

Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves wanting that feeling for real. They want men to adore them like Lloyd Dobler would, and they want women to think like Aimee Mann, and they expect all their arguments to sound like Sam Malone and Diane Chambers. They think everything will work out perfectly in the end (just like it did for Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones and Nick Hornby's Rob Fleming), and they don't stop believing because Journey's Steve Perry insists we should never do that.