Chuck Klosterman Quotes

It's possible for me to imagine a generation of people maybe two generations removed from you who might decide that we have an adversarial relationship with technology.

As an adult, the only people who care about horror movies are academics. No one loves to talk about horror films more than somebody with a Ph.D. in cultural studies at a university.

I would hate for climate change to be accepted simply because everyone was dying.

I'm good at being by myself. I guess if you're a writer you get used to that.

Maybe I could survive in one of those resort prisons where they house white-collar criminals. I've always wanted to get better at tennis.

If I'm around spiders, my fear isn't so much the spider, but my fear is that I'm somewhere rustic and that spiders are crawling around. I must be in the woods.

Flying to me isn't scary, it's just incredibly boring. And I guess I have a fear of boredom, so in that regard, I'm afraid to fly.

I'm really an alarmist when it comes to epidemics. Swine flu now; when SARS was big, I was all freaked out about that, bird flu. That terrifies me.

You can't go into the office and be a jerk. You can't yell at your kids or your wife or your husband for no reason. That makes you a terrible person.

It is impossible to examine questions we refuse to ask.

And I'm probably wrong. Maybe not completely, but partially. And maybe not today, but eventually.

The practical reality is that any present-tense version of the world is unstable. What we currently consider to be true--both objectively and subjectively--is habitually provisional.

And the quality all these reasonable failures share is an inability to accept that the statue quo is temporary.

The world happens as it happens, but we construct what we remember and what we forget. And people will eventually do that to us, too.

And if something is only itself, it doesn't particularly matter.

It's difficult to cope with the infinite variety of the past, and so we apply filters and settle on a few famous names.

Crazy things seem normal, normal things seem crazy.

We’re starting to behave as if we’ve reached the end of human knowledge. And while that notion is undoubtedly false, the sensation of certitude it generates is paralyzing.

TV takes away our freedom to have whatever thoughts we want. So do photographs, movies, and the Internet. They provide us with more intellectual stimuli, but they construct a lower, harder ceiling.

It's nice to think that the weirdos get to decide what matters about the past, since it's the weirdos who care the most.

History is defined by people who don’t really understand what they are defining.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If cavemen had known how to laugh, history would have been different.

Record sales don't matter when the people who bought the records are dead and gone.

Hitler is the human catch-all for all other terrible humans.

The drive to Santa Fe on I-25 is midly zen. There are public road signs that say "Gusty Winds May Exist". This seems more like lazy philosophy than travel advice.

Necessity used to be the mother of invention, but then we ran out of things that were necessary.

If a problem is irreversible, is there still an ethical obligation to try to reverse it?

The first moment someone calls for a revolution is usually the last moment I take them seriously.

Wishing for control is like wishing for the rapture.

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

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

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

It"s easier to believe there's a monster under the bed if you've spent the last six months arguing with a monster.