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Do You Know People Who Insist They Like 'all Kinds Of Music'? That Actually Means They Like No Kinds Of Music.
-Chuck Klosterman
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Do You Know People

Chuck Klosterman
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Do You Know People Who Insist They Like 'all Kinds Of Music'? That Actually Means They Like No Kinds Of Music.

Understanding the Quote: "do you know people who insist they like 'all kinds of music'?..."

This quote by Chuck Klosterman reflects deeply on the theme of music. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Music, Mean, People, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Chuck Klosterman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on music and mean. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Music
Mean
People
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Able
Feels
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.
Cancer
Thinking
Rocks
We Are Often Wrong About The Past, But At Least With The Past You Can Change Your Thinking. We Can't Do That With The Future.
Past
Thinking
But It Goes Without Saying That Michael Jordan Could Never Date Pamela Anderson. That Would Cause The Apocalypse.
Jordan
Causes
Apocalypse
When I Was A Film Critic, The Reason I Kind Of Found It Disenchanting Was Because The Things That I Wanted To Talk About Were The Ideas In The Movie, The Theme Of It, And Contextual Elements That Weren't Necessarily Central To The Story. But The Only Thing People Really Wanted Was A Plot Description And How Many Stars I'd Give It. It Didn't Matter How Much Effort You Put Into Writing A Piece, They Looked At It Solely As A Consumer's Guide Toward Going Or Not Going To Films.
Stars
Writing
Ideas
Even Eternally Free People Are Enslaved By The Process Of Living.
People
Process
If You Stare Long Enough At Anything, You Will Start To Find Similarities. The Word “coincidence” Exists In Order To Stop People From Seeing Meaning Where None Exists.
Order
Long
People
It's Peculiar What You Remember When You're Not Trying.
Trying
Peculiar
Remember
But No Matter How Many Times We Re-rank The Presidents, In Another 200 Years, The Top Presidents Will Still Be Washington And Lincoln And Jefferson, Because They Defined What A President Is. They Are The Idea, And You Can't Be Better Than The Idea.
President
As Of Right Now, I Am In Love With Her, And That Love Is The Biggest Problem In My Life.
Love Is
Problem
Right Now
I Love The Way Music Inside A Car Makes You Feel Invisible; If You Plan The Stereo At Max Volume, It's Almost Like The Other People Can't See Into Your Vehicle. It Tints Your Windows, Somehow.
Music
People
Car
The Goal Of Being Alive Is To Figure Out What It Means To Be Alive.
Mean
Goal
Alive
If Donald Trump Loses Badly, It Could Mean The End Of The Gop As One Of The Two Significant Parties.
Party
Mean
Two
Unless You're Shannon Hoon (of Blind Melon), Dying Is The Only Thing That Guarantees A Rock Star Will Have A Legacy That Stretches Beyond Temporary Relevance.
Stars
Rocks
Dying
All My Friends Are Rock Critics, So We Talk About Rock Criticism A Lot. Because Of That, In Order To Be Part Of The Conversation, You Have To Have An Awareness Of What The Discussion Is.
Rocks
Order
Criticism
When You're Writing For Newspapers You Have All These Parameters. You Can't Swear, You Have To Use Short Paragraphs, All That. If You Stay Within Those Parameters, You Have Lots Of Freedom Because You're Writing For The Next Day.
Writing
Next Day
Use
Life Is Rarely About What Happened; It's Mostly About What We Think Happened.
Thinking
Life Is
Sex Drugs
This Is What Being Alive Feels Like, You Know? The Place Doesn't Matter. You Just Live.
Alive
Matter
Like You
The Debate About Climate Change In Many Ways Is Tied To The Petroleum Industry. If The Value Of Petroleum Was Considerably Less Than It Is, And The Value Of Coal Was Considerably Less Than It Is, There Would Be Much Less Debate About This.
Coal
Way
Climate
Without A Soundtrack, Human Interaction Is Meaningless.
Soundtracks
Interaction
Humans
Let's Say Twitter Existed During The Civil War. We Would Have A Better Understanding Of People In The Confederacy Who Were Against Slavery, People In The North Who Actually Felt We Should Just Let The South Be The South. Because The Way It Is Now, It Seems Like We Have This Portrait Where Everybody In Georgia Hated Yankees And Everybody In The North Was Enlightened. That Wouldn't Seem As Clear Cut As It Does Now.
War
Cutting
Yankees
Seeing No Resolution To My Existential Recognition Of Loss, I Decide To Eat Lunch.
Loss
Lunch
Recognition
If Someone Feels Negative About The Way Society Or Culture Seems To Be Going, What It Probably Suggests Is That It's Just Moving Away From The State That They Are Comfortable With Or Used To. It's Understandable Why Someone Would Feel That Way.
Moving
Negative
Culture
A Lot Of People Involved With Celebrity Journalism Have Interesting Ideas About The People They Want To Write About Going Into The Interview. Then As Soon As They Actually Sit Down With That Person, They Basically Ask The Questions They Think Journalists Are Supposed To Ask, And They Start Viewing Themselves Almost As A Peer Of The Subject. Like They're Going To Become Friends. That's Why Most Celebrity Journalism Is So Terrible.
Writing
Thinking
People
The Last Girl I Love Will Be Someone I Haven’t Even Met Yet, Probably.
Girl
Lasts
Mets
I Remember Saying Things, But I Have No Idea What Was Said. It Was Generally A Friendly Conversation.” —associated Press Reporter Jack Sullivan, Attempting To Recount A 3 A.m. Exchange We Had At A Dinner Party And Inadvertently Describing The Past Ten Years Of My Life.
Party
Past
Years
Anyone Who Claims To Be Good At Lying Is Obviously Bad At Lying. Thus - As A Writer Myself - I Cannot Comment On Whether Or Not Writers Are Exceptionally Good Liars, Because Whatever I Said Would Actually Mean Its Complete Opposite.
Liars
Lying
Mean
The Message Of "the Winner Takes It All" Is Straightforward: It Argues That The Concept Of Relationships Ending On Mutual Terms Is An Emotional Fallacy. One Person Is Inevitably Okay And The Other Is Inevitably Devastated.
Emotional
Messages
Relationships Ending
The Things He Did On Purpose Were Usually No Different From The Mistakes He Made By Accident.
Mistake
Different
Purpose
Women Intrinsically Understand Human Dynamics, And That Makes Them Unstoppable. Unfortunately, The Average Man Is Less Adroit At Fostering Such Rivalries, Which Is Why Most Men Remain Average; Males Are Better At Hating Things That Can't Hate Them Back (e.g., Lawnmowers, Cats, The Denver Broncos, Et Cetera). They Don't See The Big Picture.
Hate
Cat
Men
Important Things Are Inevitably Cliche, But Nobody Wants To Admit That.
Important
Want
Cliche
You're Trying To Find New Ideas In People. I Always Think To Myself, What Question I Am Least Comfortable Asking The Person? And Then I Make Sure I Ask It Early In The Interview.
Thinking
Ideas
People
I Hate The Point Where You Have To Get Off The Ladder, Or Get Back On. I Don't Know If That's A Fear Of Heights, Or Literally A Fear Of Falling. I Want To Be Afraid To Fall. That Seems Like A Good Fear.
Hate
Fall
Ladders
Her Nomination For Vice President In 2008 Represents The Most Desperate Inclinations Of The Republican Party. In Two Hundred Years, I Suspect Historians Will Use Palin As An Example Of How Insane America Became In The Decade Following The Destruction Of The World Trade Center, And Her Origin Story Will Seem As Extraterrestrial And Eccentric As Abe Lincoln Jumping Out Of A Window To Undermine A Voting Quorum In 1840.
Party
Two
America
If I Basically View Criticism As Sort Of An Interesting Form Of Writing About Oneself, An Interesting Form Of Autobiography, Then I Don't Feel Any Pressure To Have Any Kind Of Authoritative, Universal Voice. That Kind Of Thing Has Never Interested Me.
Writing
Interesting
Criticism
Sometimes I Think Children Are The Worst People Alive. And Even If They're Not- Even If Some Smiling Toddler Is As Pure As Evian- It's Only A Matter Of Time.
Children
Thinking
People
I Look At Camping The Same Way I Look At Horror Movies. All The Years That Humans Fought To Get Into Caves And Into Shelters - It Almost Seems Sacrilegious To Go Outside And Sleep Without A Roof. We Work So Hard To Have These Things!
Sleep
Years
Camping
If You Move Furniture All Day, If You're A Construction Worker, If You Have A Job That's Real Physical, This Idea That There Is A Sport That Involves The Kind Of Conventional, Traditional View Of Toughness, You See That Still As A Positive Thing.
Sports
Jobs
Real
Why Don't I Like Crowds? I Suppose The Worst Possible Thing I Could Say Is That I Don't Like People, And That Crowds Are Just Collections Of People. That Seems Like A Very Nihilistic Way To Look At The World.
People
Looks
World
I Think Anyone Who's Not As Good A Writer As Me Is Absolutely A Hack, And I Think Anybody Who's A Slightly Better Writer Than Me Is Brilliant. So Of Course That Makes Me A Horrible Critic When It Comes To Books, Because I Can't Distance My Own Experience From What I'm Doing.
Distance
Book
Thinking
I Care About Strangers When They're Abstractions, But I Feel Almost Nothing When They're Literally In Front Of Me.
Care
Stranger
Feels
When I Think About The Future, I'm Not Necessarily Arguing It's Going To Be Better Or Worse. I'm Just Saying It's Going To Be Different.
Thinking
Different
Arguing
We Are Always Dying, All The Time. That's What Living Is; Living Is Dying, Little By Little. It Is A Sequenced Collection Of Individualized Deaths.
Dying
Littles
Collections
Saying You Like "piano Man" Doesn't Mean You Like Billy Joel; It Means You're Willing To Go To A Piano Bar If There's Nothing Else To Do
Mean
Men
Piano
And It's Kind Of My Own Fault Too, In The Sense That I've Used My Own Life As A Literary Device So Much. I Think People Feel Very Comfortable Reviewing The Idea Of Me, As Opposed To What I've Actually Written. I Find That Most Of The Time, When People Write About One Of My Books, They're Really Just Writing About What They Think I May Or May Not Represent, As Sort Of This Abstract Entity. Is That Unfair? Not Really. If I Put Myself In This Position Where I'm Going To Kind Of Weave Elements Of Memoir Into Almost Everything, Well, I Suppose That's Going To Happen.
Book
Writing
Thinking
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.
Spiders
Woods
Crawling
People Who Are Wrong During Particularly Important Moments Inevitably Spend The Rest Of Their Lives Trying To Explain How Their Wrongness Was Paradoxically Correct, Or-at The Very Least-why Their Wrongness "felt Right At The Time," Which Is Very, Very Different From Being Authentically Correct.
People
Important
Trying
I Would Hate For Climate Change To Be Accepted Simply Because Everyone Was Dying.
Hate
Dying
Climate
Punk Was Perfect For Lazy People, Because Anyone Could Do It--you Didn't Even Need To Know How To Play Your Instrument, Assuming You Knew How To Plug It In. There Was Really No Difference Between Sid Vicious And Anyone In London Who Owned A Bass.
Lazy People
Play
Differences
Mostly, We Argued About Who Which Of Us Was Better At Arguing, And Particularly About Who Had Won The Previous Argument.
Arguing
Argument
Every Relationship Is Fundamentally A Power Struggle, And The Individual In Power Is Whoever Likes The Other Person Less.
Relationship
Struggle
Power
I Think This Is The Kind Of Thing Where We're Rapidly Moving Toward An Age Where Most Of The Populace Will Be Almost Unable To Imagine Life Without An Internet Component Interlocked With It.
Moving
Thinking
Age
When Someone Writes A Book Review, They Obviously Already Self-identify As A Writer. I Mean, They Are. They're Writers, They're Critics, And They're Writing About A Book About A Writer Who's A Critic. So I Think It's Really Hard For People To Distance Themselves From What They're Criticizing.
Distance
Book
Writing
Necessity Used To Be The Mother Of Invention, But Then We Ran Out Of Things That Were Necessary. The Postmodern Mother Of Invention Is Desire; We Don’t Really “need” Anything New, So We Only Create What We Want.
Mother
Desire
Needs
Americans Have Become Conditioned To Believe The World Is A Gray Place Without Absolutes; This Is Because We're Simultaneously Both Cowardly And Arrogant. We Don't Know The Answers, So We Assume They Must Not Exist.
Believe
Arrogant
Answers
There Was A Time In Our Very Recent History When It Was “interesting” To Be A Star Wars Fan. It Was Sort Of Like Admitting You Masturbate Twice A Day Or That Your Favorite Band Was They Might Be Giants. Star Wars Was Something Everyone Of A Certain Age Secretly Loved But Never Openly Recognized
Stars
War
Interesting
As More And More People Recognize The Level Of Violence Involved And The Consequences Of Cte [chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy, A Degenerative Brain Disorder], They're Obviously Going To Say "we Don't Want This To Be A Part Of Culture." And They Overlook The Fact That There's A Huge Swath Of The Populace Where Physicality Is Still A Real Common Thing.
Real
People
Brain
It Was The Kind Of Love You Can Only Feel Toward Someone You Don't Actually Know.
Love You
Kind
Feels
Sometimes I Wonder What Will Be The Air Conditioning Of My Dying Days. What Thing Will They Add That Will Make It Impossible To Be Uncomfortable? Because I Do Assume That As An Old Person, I Will Be Very Comfortable. There Will Be Something - A Drug Or Some Way To Impact The Air Around Me - That When I Relax, I'm Gonna Feel Great. So I Do Look Forward To That.
Impact
Air
Drug
It Is Very Easy For Me To Imagine In 200 Years, People Looking Back At Chemotherapy As Proof That People Of The 20th Century Were Insane And Just Morons.
Years
People
Insane
Soccer Is Like Punk Rock: The Product Is Not Necessarily Terrible. The Problem Is The Fan Base.
Soccer
Rocks
Fans
In New York, People Are Unhappy On Purpose, Because Unhappiness Makes Them Seem More Complex; In Washington Dc It Just Sort Of Works Out That Way.
New York
People
Work Out
The Biggest Hurdle To Writing Fargo Rock City Was That I Couldn't Afford A Home Computer - I Had To Get A New Job So I Could Buy A Computer. It Could All Change Though. In Five Years, I Could Be Back At Some Daily Newspaper, Which Wouldn't Be So Bad.
Jobs
Home
Writing
In Baseball And Sex, Cliches Are Usually True: Pitching Beats Hitting, And People Always Want To Be Loved By Anyone Who Doesn't Seem To Care.
Baseball
Sex
People
I Grew Up On A Farm, And We Didn't Have Cable And Only Limited Radio Stations, So I Wasn't Inundated With Culture The Way People In Other Parts Of The Country Were. But I Was Really Interested In It.
Country
People
Way
If I Had To Make A Choice Between Only Writing About Sports Or Only Writing About Music, I Would Probably Write About Music. I'm Not Sure Why That Is. There Seems To Be More To Write About With Music, Just Because It's More Of A Splintered Thing. There's More Subgenres. With Sports, It's More Objective In A Way.
Sports
Writing
Choices
The Problem A Lot Of Writers Have Is That They Really Enjoy People Saying, "you're Brilliant." They Let Their Self-perception Be Dictated By Reader Response. But If You're Going To Let Other People Make You Feel Good, You're Going To End Up Feeling Bad When They Say The Opposite. You've Got To Be A Cultural Stoic. Then You Won't Be Devastated By People Who Respond Negatively. Of Course, The Downside Is That It Sort Of Stops You From Being Able To Enjoy People Liking Your Work.
People
Feel Good
Feelings
Every Possible Opinion Is Authored About Everything. What's Going To Eventually Happen Is Someone Will Look Back On This Period And Have To Sift Through It. The Overwhelming Majority Of Those Opinions Are Going To Be Ignored, Because If Every Opinion Is Being Offered, Really No Opinion Is Being Offered.
Looks
Majority
Opinion
Prior To The Early 20th Century, For The Totality Of Humankind's Existence If They Saw Something Moving, It Meant It Was There. If They Saw A Tiger Walking, That Meant They Were Near A Live Tiger. This Was Entrenched In Our Subconscious And Our Unconscious.then That Drastically Changed With Film And Television.
Moving
Saws
Film And Television
The Amount Of Response I Get, In Both A Negative And A Positive Context, Is Completely Related To The Amount Of Books I Sell, I Think. It Seems To Have Nothing To Do With What I'm Writing, But What Degree Of Success I'm Perceived To Have. It's Really Weird, Especially Since I Spent So Much Of My Life Covering People Who Are Famous. It's Interesting To Actually Have It Happen To Me On Some Level.
Book
Writing
Thinking
I Think One Possibility [in The Future] Might Be Chemotherapy. And I'm Always Hesitant To Say That Because It Makes It Sound Like I'm Against Chemotherapy. Right Now, Chemotherapy Is The Best Cancer Treatment Therapy We Have. But Let's Say We Find Some Way Where We Can Almost Genetically Engineer The Dna Of Our Being And Fight Cancer That Way. Then, The Idea That We Used To Pump Poison Into People To Fight Off Cancer Will Almost Seem Like The Use Of Leeches Or Something.
Cancer
Fighting
Thinking
There's This Belief That Some Things Can Be Taken Seriously In An Intellectual Way, While Some Things Are Only Entertainment Or Only A Commodity. Or There's Some Kind Of Critical Consensus That Some Things Are "good," And Some Things Are Garbage, Throwaway Culture. And I Think The Difference Between Them, In A Lot Of Ways, Is Actually Much Less Than People Think. Especially When You Get Down To How They Affect The Audience.
Taken
Thinking
Differences
The Worst Thing You Can Do To Anybody Trying To Be Creative Is To Demand Participation In Their Vision.
Design
Creative
Vision
If You're Doing An Interview, You Need Conversational Tension. After You Talk To Them, You're Not Going To Have A Relationship With Them, They're Not Going To Like You, They're Not Going To Be Your Friend.
Talking
Needs
Interviews
The Sims Is An Escapist Vehicle For People Who Want To Escape To Where They Already Are, Which Is Why I Thought This Game Was Made Precisely For Me.
Games
People
Want
In And Of Itself, Nothing Really Matters. What Matters Is That Nothing Is Ever In And Of Itself.
What Matters
Matter
Sex Drugs
I Tend To Equate Sadness With Intelligence.
Sadness
I Am Interested In The Possibility That We Are Going To Be Wrong In The Same Way That History Has Indicated That Mankind Always Is. It Seems As Though The History Of Ideas Is The History Of Being Wrong. And To Me, That Is A Kind Of Continuum. It's A Continual Path That Shows We Don't Always Know Something, But We're Always Shifting To A Path That Makes Us Feel More Comfortable In The Moment, Even If That Shift Is Wrong, And A New Shift Is Destined To Happen Again.
Path
Kind
Moments
Whenever I Can’t Sleep, I Like To Lie In The Darkness And Pretend I’ve Been Assassinated. I’ve Found This Is The Best Way To Get Comfortable. I Imagine I’m In The Coffin At My Funeral, And People From My Past Are Walking By My Corpse And Making Comments About My Demise.
Lying
Sleep
Past
The Only People Who Can Ever Put Ideas Into Context Are People Who Don't Care; The Unbiased And Apathetic Are Usually The Wisest Dudes In The Room. If You Want To Totally Misunderstand Why Something Is Supposedly Important, Find The Biggest Fan Of That Particular Thing And Ask Him For An Explanation. He Will Tell You Everything That Doesn't Matter To Anyone Who Isn't Him. He Will Describe Paradoxical Details And Share Deeply Personal Anecdotes, And It Will All Be Autobiography; He Will Simply Be Explaining Who He Is By Discussing Something Completely Unrelated To His Life.
Ideas
People
Important
When Given The Choice, We’d All Rather Be Happy Now … Even If That Guarantees We’ll All Be Sad Later.
Choices
Guarantees
Given
I Write Pretty Fast, Probably Faster Than Most People. But I Might Think About Something For Six Hours, Then Write It In 20 Minutes. So Did I Write For Six Hours And 20 Minutes, Or Just 20 Minutes? I Used To Write Absolutely Every Day, Except For Days When I Had To Travel Or Something.
Writing
Thinking
People
Perhaps We Humans Are Still In Command, And Perhaps There Really Will Be A Conventional Robot War In The Not-so-distant Future. If So, Let's Roll.
War
Robots
Command
I Am Of The Opinion, And Have Been For A Long Time, That Any Kind Of Big Technological Move Is Almost Always Positive In The Short Term But Inevitably Somewhat Negative In The Long Term. And I Think There Are Many Examples Of This In Every Possible Context.
Moving
Thinking
Long
We All Eventually Become Whatever We Pretend To Hate.
Hate
Sometimes I Think That The Amount Of Time You Live On Earth Is Just An Inverse Reflection Of How Good You Were In A Previous Existence. For Example, Infants Who Die From Sids Were Actually Great People When They Were Alive For Real, So They Get To Go To Heaven After A Mere Five Weeks In Purgatory. Meanwhile Anyone Willard Scott Ever Congratulated For Turning One Hundred Two Was Obviously A Terrible Individual Who Had Many Many Previous Sins To Pay For And Had To Spend A Century In His Or Her Own Unknown Purgatory Even Though The Person Seemed Perfectly Wholesome In This Particular World.
Real
Reflection
Thinking
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.
Sadness
Mean
Evil
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