Chuck Klosterman Quotes

When I think about the future, I'm not necessarily arguing it's going to be better or worse. I'm just saying it's going to be different.

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.

As more and more people recognize the level of violence involved and the consequences of CTE [chronic traumatic encephelopathy, a degenerative brain disorder], they're obviously going to say "We don't want this to be a part of culture." And they overlook the fact that there's a huge swath of the populace where physicality is still a real common thing.

I tend to equate sadness with intelligence.

Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake. Every comparison becomes impractical. This is why the impractical has become totally acceptable; impracticality almost seems cool.

A homeless man once told me that dancing to rap music is the cultural equivalent of masturbating, and I'd sort of fell the same way about playing John Madden Football immediately after filing my income tax: It's fun, but - somehow - vaguely pathetic.

To me, fear of the future means fear of technology. I have a little bit of that. I still use it, but I kind of see technology as this harmful thing that's so ingrained in my life that it sort of dictates and controls my relationship with it.

The biggest hurdle to writing Fargo Rock City was that I couldn't afford a home computer - I had to get a new job so I could buy a computer. It could all change though. In five years, I could be back at some daily newspaper, which wouldn't be so bad.

If you can't swim, the idea of being in nine feet of water is terrifying, much less the ocean.

Observing someone without context amplifies the experience. The more we know, the less we are able to feel.

In New York, people are unhappy on purpose, because unhappiness makes them seem more complex; in Washington DC it just sort of works out that way.

I feel like a lot of people involved with celebrity journalism have interesting ideas about the people they want to write about going into the interview. Then as soon as they actually sit down with that person, they basically ask the questions they think journalists are supposed to ask, and they start viewing themselves almost as a peer of the subject. Like they're going to become friends. That's why most celebrity journalism is so terrible.

My mind and gut are never simpatico: Every time I think somebody likes me, she doesn't; every time I think somebody doesn't like me, she does. This has never changed and I'm certain it never will.

The 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.

I look at camping the same way I look at horror movies. All the years that humans fought to get into caves and into shelters - it almost seems sacrilegious to go outside and sleep without a roof. We work so hard to have these things!

The amount of response I get, in both a negative and a positive context, is completely related to the amount of books I sell, I think. It seems to have nothing to do with what I'm writing, but what degree of success I'm perceived to have. It's really weird, especially since I spent so much of my life covering people who are famous. It's interesting to actually have it happen to me on some level.

Saying you like "Piano Man" doesn't mean you like Billy Joel; it means you're willing to go to a piano bar if there's nothing else to do

It drives me crazy to do readings of my books, because if I read anything I've written in the past, I'd like to almost rewrite everything. If I could, I'd completely rewrite Fargo Rock City, and every sentence would be just slightly different. In all likelihood, most of them wouldn't be any better. Some of them would just be changed back to whatever form they used to be, before I second-guessed myself the first time.

We’re all tourists, sort of. Life is tourism, sort of. As far as I’m concerned, the dinosaurs still hold the lease on this godforsaken rock.

If you move furniture all day, if you're a construction worker, if you have a job that's real physical, this idea that there is a sport that involves the kind of conventional, traditional view of toughness, you see that still as a positive thing.

Instead, we were given a publication called the Weekly Reader, which was like a newspaper for four-foot illiterates.

Do you know people who insist they like 'all kinds of music'? That actually means they like no kinds of music.

We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

I honestly believe that people of my generation despise authenticity, mostly because they're all so envious of it.

Some say that time is like water that flows around us (like a stone in the river) and some say we flow with time (like a twig floating on the surface of the water).

It seems as though our ability to change technology happens so quickly, and our ability to evolve as creatures is still very slow.

There was a time in our very recent history when it was “interesting” to be a Star Wars fan. It was sort of like admitting you masturbate twice a day or that your favorite band was They Might Be Giants. Star Wars was something everyone of a certain age secretly loved but never openly recognized

A lot of people involved with celebrity journalism have interesting ideas about the people they want to write about going into the interview. Then as soon as they actually sit down with that person, they basically ask the questions they think journalists are supposed to ask, and they start viewing themselves almost as a peer of the subject. Like they're going to become friends. That's why most celebrity journalism is so terrible.

When you're writing for newspapers you have all these parameters. You can't swear, you have to use short paragraphs, all that. If you stay within those parameters, you have lots of freedom because you're writing for the next day.

No woman will ever satisfy me. I know that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay, because I will never satisfy a woman, either. Should I be writing such thoughts? Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s a bad idea. I can definitely foresee a scenario where that first paragraph could come back to haunt me, especially if I somehow became marginally famous.

I really hate being sick. It seems inevitable that at one point, one of these predicted epidemics is going to be real. So often they come up, and there's people like me that are freaked out, and the majority of people are just like, "You're being idiots, this happens every other year."

The villain is the person who knows the most but cares the least.

The falling flakes were random and without purpose; the snow was drunker than she was.

You're trying to find new ideas in people. I always think to myself, what question I am least comfortable asking the person? And then I make sure I ask it early in the interview.

And I spilled gravy on my Carolina sweater, because I am alive.