Quotes by Chuck Klosterman

“Dont ever cheat on someone. Im serious. Its not worth it. . . . The only thing infidelity does is remind you of the people youre not having sex with, which is something you can just as easily think about when youre completely alone.”

“I am a marijuana person.”

“Sometimes I think children are the worst people alive. And even if theyre not - even if some smiling toddler is as pure as Evian - its only a matter of time ... As far as I can tell, the nicest thing you can say about children is that they havent done anything terrible yet.”

“Small towns usually make sure their places of doom disappear. But thats not the case here: In West Warwick, what used to be a tavern is now an ad hoc cemetery -- which is the role taverns play in most small towns, but not as obviously as this.”

“ANYWAY, by the time you read this sentence, the song I am referring to will be ten thousand years old.”

“I guess what Im saying is, Im not your enemy.”

“Unless youre Shannon Hoon (of Blind Melon), dying is the only thing that guarantees a rock star will have a legacy that stretches beyond temporary relevance,”

“Killing Yourself to Live: 85 Percent of a True Story.”

“Killing Yourself to Live”

“It makes me happy.”

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

I once loved a girl who almost loved me, but not as much as she loved John Cusack.

I suppose well never know what really happened in that room, though he did tell police, I did it because Im a dirty dog. This is not a very convincing alibi. He may as well have said, I got 99 problems, but a bitch aint one.

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

But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), Im going to blame John Cusack.

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 cant hate them back (e.g., lawnmowers, cats, the Denver Broncos, et cetera). They dont see the big picture.

There are two ways to look at life. The first view is that nothing stays the same and that nothing is inherently connected, and that the only driving force in anyones life is entropy. The second is that everything pretty much stays the same (more or less) and that everything is completely connected, even if we dont realize it.

If rain is God crying, I think God is drunk and his girlfriend just slept with Zeus.

But I still feel like I lost.We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. Its easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in the sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I havent even met yet. probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and youll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But theres still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real-but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and theyre often just the person you happen to meet first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.

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.