Puck's Quote Board, page 16
Boasting 1613 quotes!
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As always, that’s the singular key to appearing ridiculous; as long as everyone knows you’re doing it, it’s completely cool.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:19 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
It’s always too easy to get attention by making yourself dead. I was trying to get attention by being alive in a really obvious way.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:19 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Let’s face it: Sadness and evil are always more believable than happiness and love. When a movie reviewer calls a film “realistic,” everyone knows what that means – it means the movie has an unhappy ending.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:17 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
It’s one thing to realize that something is goofy, but it’s quite another to suggest that goofiness disqualifies its significance. If anything, it expands the significance, because the product becomes accessible to a wider audience (and to the kind of audience who would never look for symbolism on its own).
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:15 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
The single biggest influence on our lives was the inescapable sameness of everything, which is probably true for most generations.
Jefferson Morely makes a brilliant point about inflation in his 1988 essay “Twentysomething”: “For us, everything seemed normal. I remember wondering why people were surprised that prices were going up. I thought, That’s what prices did.” Consider that those sentiments come from a guy who was already in high school during Watergate – roughly the same year I was born. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever been legitimately shocked by anything, even as a third-grader in 1981. That was the year John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, and I wasn’t surprised at all (in fact, it seemed to me that presidential assassinations didn’t happen nearly as often as one would expect). From what I could tell, the world has always been a deeply underwhelming place; my generation inherited this paradigm, and it was perfectly fine with me (both then and now).Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:14 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Commercial success does not legitimize musical consequence, but it does legitimize cultural consequence.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:06 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Chain bookstores always amaze me, because it seems like someone has written a book about absolutely everything. I think that’s why bookstores have become the hot place for single adults to hook up – bookstores have a built-in pick-up line that always fits the situation. You simply walk up to any desirable person in the place, look at whatever section they’re in, and you say (with a certain sense of endearing bewilderment), “Isn’t it insane how many books there are about ____?” Fill in the blank with any subject at which the individual happens to be looking, and you will always seem perceptive. Of course there’s going to be a ridiculous number of books on draft horses (or David Berkowitz, or the pipe organ renaissance, or theories about the mating habits of the Sasquatch, or whatever), and you will both enjoy the chuckle over the concept of literary overkill. The best part of this scheme is that it actually seems spontaneous. Bookstores have always been a great place for liars and sexual predators.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:05 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities.
Speaker: Andrew CarnegiePosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 7:16 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
It is impossibly to live happily when your life is defined by a mistake.
Yet this is how it goes, always.
We are remembered for the totality of our accomplishments, but we are defined by the singularity of our greatest failure. It does not matter what you have been right about, and it does not matter how often that rightness is validated by others. We are what we cannot do.Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 7:09 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Nobody hates or loves anyone except themselves.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 7:05 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
And what was money? It was merely a temptation to commit wrong. Rich people weren’t happy. They were generally miserable and usually confused. Most of the time they didn’t even realize they were rich; almost without exception, they wrongly viewed themselves as middle-class. But there’s no such thing as middle-class. The middle class does not exist. If you believe you are part of the middle class, it just means you’re rich and insecure or poor and misinformed.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 7:03 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
It is important to have questionable friends you can trust unconditionally.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:56 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Society is so confused, Mitch thought. Everyone wanted to become the person they were already pretending to be.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:54 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
There is no feeling that can match the emotive intensity of an attraction devoid of explanation.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:51 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Teaching history to eighth graders is like being a tour guide for people who hate their vacation.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:50 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
It was all (of course) too predictable to believe. Which is how life always is: Pitching beats hitting, and people always want to be loved by anyone who doesn’t seem to care.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Downtown OwlPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:47 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
She’s right of course. It’s not fair. Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable.
Speaker: Nick HornbySource: How to Be GoodPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:43 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Who are these people, that they want to save the world and yet they are incapable of forming proper relationships with anybody? As GoodNews so eloquently puts it, it’s love this and love that, but of course it’s so easy to love someone you don’t know, whether it’s George Clooney or Monkey. Staying civil to someone with whom you’ve ever shared Christmas turkey – now there’s a miracle.
Speaker: Nick HornbySource: How to Be GoodPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:39 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Getting married and having a family is like emigrating. I used to live in the same country as my brother; I used to share his values and his tastes and his attitudes, and then I moved away. And even though I didn’t notice it happening, I started to speak with a different accent, and think differently, and even though I remembered my native land fondly, all traces of it had gone from me.
Speaker: Nick HornbySource: How to Be GoodPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:35 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Sadness is a right sod for keeping itself hidden away. A right sod. Gotta come out sometime, though, and it’s pouring out of you.”
Speaker: Nick HornbySource: How to Be GoodPosted: 05 Nov 2009 at 6:29 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment!