Quotes by Chuck Klosterman

Crazy things seem normal, normal things seem crazy.

Within these strangely specific conditions, everything is perfect. We are perfect.

Its far easier to write why something is terrible than why its good. If youre reviewing a film and you decide This is a movie I dont 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 its not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. Whats 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.

People will look at the world without seeing anything beyond their unconscious expectation.

However, I suppose VH1 *is* selling me something; theyre selling nostalgia, which means theyre selling my own memories back to me, which means theyre selling me to me.

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).

...his lazy eye drifting around the room like a child looking for the bathroom.

The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no normal because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously.

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but thats not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer cant tell if what theyre creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. Its an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect theyre being entertained. Of course, the reader isnt really sure, either. They just want to know when theyre supposed to pretend to be amused.

I care about strangers when theyre abstractions, but I feel almost nothing when theyre literally in front of me.

Outcasts may grow up to be novelists and filmmakers and computer tycoons, but they will never be the athletic ruling class.

Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.

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

Just watch any husband arguing with his wife about something insignificant; listen to what they say and watch how their residual emotions manifest when the fight is over. It’s so formulaic and unsurprising that you wouldn’t dare re-create it in a movie. All the critics would mock it. They’d all say the screenwriter was a hack who didn’t even try. This is why movies have less value than we like to pretend — movies can’t show reality, because honest depictions of reality offend intelligent people.

Its easier to believe theres a monster under the bed if youve spent the last six months arguing with a monster.

And all I could do while I listened to this dude tell me how punk rock saved his life was think, Wow. Why did my friend waste all that time going to chemotherapy? I guess we should have just played him a bunch of shitty Black Flag records.

“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.”

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

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