{"author":"Chuck Klosterman","author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman","total_quotes":86,"quotes":[{"text":"I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the straight narratives. P60.","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["klosterman","lonely-people","novel","visible-man"],"id":2354,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"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.","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["culture","society"],"id":10425,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"People will look at the world without seeing anything beyond their unconscious expectation.","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["expectations","see"],"id":13790,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"It’s natural to think of one’s own life as a novel (or a movie or a play), and within that narrative we are always the central character. Thoughtful people try to overcome this compulsion, but they usually fail (in fact, trying makes it worse). In a commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace argued that conquering the preoccupation with self is pretty much the whole objective of being alive — but if we are to believe Wallace succeeded at this goal, it must be the darkest success imaginable.","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["ego","life"],"id":32536,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the 'form of funny,' which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness. ","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["analysis","blogging","culture","humor"],"id":36680,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"We spend our lives learning many things, only to discover (again and again) that most of what we've learned is either wrong or irrelevant. A big part of our mind can handle this; a smaller, deeper part cannot. And it's that smaller part that matters more, because that part of our mind is who we really are (whether we like it or not).","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["2016","futility","learning"],"id":69666,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"I love the way music inside a car makes you feel invisible; if you play the stereo at max volume, it's almost like the other people can't see into your vehicle. It tints your windows, somehow.","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["music","power-of-music"],"id":79198,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"The ultimate failure of the United States will probably not derive from the problems we see or the conflicts we wage. It will more likely derive from our uncompromising belief in the things we consider unimpeachable and idealized and beautiful. Because every strength is a weakness, if given enough time.","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["politics"],"id":87053,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"Hitler is the human catch-all for all other terrible humans.","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["society","truth"],"id":89356,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"},{"text":"We are losing the ability to understand anything that's even vaguely complex.","author":"Chuck Klosterman","tags":["complexity","thought","understanding","wisdom"],"id":98847,"author_id":"Chuck+Klosterman"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":86,"pages":9,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}