Browsing Quotes By Chuck Klosterman, page 1
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I certainly have no qualms with the idea of killing animals. After years of research, I have come to the conclusion that animals enjoy being eaten; they think it’s fun.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:33 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Nonbreathing people get all of the breaks. Clearly, the easiest way to become “great” is to get “good” and then get “dead.”
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:32 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I thought about the way so many of my friends bitched about their parents; they all seemed to think they were destroying their lives. I never felt like that. My parents were undoubtedly crazy, but they never did anything except make my life better. I was their seventh and final child, and they did not need this. To this day, I never want them to know anything about my life that makes me seem like the horrible person I truly am. In fact, the thought of them reading this book keeps me awake at night. It makes me want to get drunk.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:31 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Here again, heavy metal was an aqueduct for vicarious, harmless evil. Even as an adolescent, I understood that the kind of kid who thought Bruce Dickinson was telling him to worship Satan was the same kind of kid who would have been corrupted by the hum of a refrigerator.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:28 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Regardless of how many people still describe themselves as “Christian” in census surveys, we live in a primarily agnostic culture. Intellectually, agnosticism makes more sense. But the downside is that when people lose their convictions about the existence of God and Satan, they are less able to have personal perspectives on what’s right and what’s wrong. They are more open-minded about old taboos, but they’re also less able to see what’s obvious (and therefore susceptible to propaganda).
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:26 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
A widely held opinion in the aesthetic community insists an artist is more credible if he doesn’t consider his audience during the creative process; the philosophy suggests that a true artists has to make his art for personal reasons, regardless of whether or not people like it (or even want it). That’s plainly stupid, and Bon Jovi knew it. Art is not intrinsic to the universe; art is a human construction. If you killed off all the world’s people, you would kill off all the art. The only thing important about art is how it affects people. It only needs to affect one person to be interesting, but it has to affect many people to be important.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:23 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I have always tried to live by a simple principle: If I am sober enough to drive, I am too sober to dance.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Fargo Rock CityPosted: 08 Nov 2009 at 8:21 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
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! -
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!