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I Really Hate Being Sick. It Seems Inevitable That At One Point, One Of These Predicted Epidemics Is Going To Be Real. So Often They Come Up, And There's People Like Me That Are Freaked Out, And The Majority Of People Are Just Like, "you're Being Idiots, This Happens Every Other Year."

-Chuck Klosterman

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I Really Hate Being

Chuck Klosterman

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I Really Hate Being Sick. It Seems Inevitable That At One Point, One Of These Predicted Epidemics Is Going To Be Real. So Often They Come Up, And There's People Like Me That Are Freaked Out, And The Majority Of People Are Just Like, "you're Being Idiots, This Happens Every Other Year."

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Texting Has Become My Favorite Way To Communicate. I Feel Like Many Of My Relationships Are Based In This, Because In A Sense It Feels The Closest To Actual Conversation That Isn't The Phone.

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.

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.

If Rain Is God Crying, I Think God Is Drunk And His Girlfriend Just Slept With Zeus.

-- And It Occurred To Me That People Who Don't Talk About Themselves Are Limiting Their Own Potential. They Think They're Guarding Themselves For Some Sort Of Abstract Dange, But They're Actually Allowing Other People To Decide Who They Are And What They're Like.

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.

I Don't Go To Scary Movies. I Don't Like The Experience Of Being Scared. I Think It's Very Weird That Some People Do. Obviously, Humans Are The Only Animals That Do That. You Don't See A Wolf Walk To The End Of A Cliff And Look Over The Edge To Freak Himself Out.

Technology Evolves Faster Than People Do, Faster Than Biology Does.

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.

At A Magazine, Everything You Do Is Edited By A Bunch Of People, By Committee, And A Lot Of Them Are, Were, Or Think Of Themselves As Writers. Part Of That Is Because Magazines Worry About Their Voice.

In The Far East, It's Very Normal For People To Wear Masks In Flu Season. I Don't Know If I'd Ever Do That, Though, Because I Don't Like Having Things On My Face.

Pundits Are Always Blaming Tv For Making People Stupid, Movies For Desensitizing The World To Violence, And Rock Music For Making Kids Take Drugs And Kill Themselves. These Things Should Be The Least Of Our Worries. The Main Problem With Mass Media Is That It Makes It Impossible To Fall In Love With Any Acumen Of Normalcy. There Is No 'normal,' Because Everybody Is Being Twisted By The Same Sources Simultaneously.

Falling In Love

Even Though I Wanted To Experience All These Things I Was Interested In, I Couldn't Get Them. So I Had To Think Critically And Culturally About What Was Available.

It Has Always Been My Belief That People Are Remembered For The Sum Of Their Accomplishments But Defined By Their Singular Failure.

Seeing No Resolution To My Existential Recognition Of Loss, I Decide To Eat Lunch.

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.

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.

If You Can't Swim, The Idea Of Being In Nine Feet Of Water Is Terrifying, Much Less The Ocean.

Without A Soundtrack, Human Interaction Is Meaningless.

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If Somebody Asked For The First Draft Of Something I'd Written, It'd Probably Be Pretty Close To Whatever Got Published. I Get Enjoyment Out Of Writing, But I Get Absolutely No Enjoyment Out Of Rewriting, So I Don't Do Much Of It. The More You Work On Something, Certainly, The Better It Gets. But There's Also A Pretty Clear Law Of Diminishing Returns.

I Honestly Believe That People Of My Generation Despise Authenticity, Mostly Because They're All So Envious Of It.

Soccer Is Like Punk Rock: The Product Is Not Necessarily Terrible. The Problem Is The Fan Base.

Let's Say Donald Trump Loses But It's Close. That Could Change The Whole Way The Job Of Being A Politician Shifts - That To Succeed In Politics, You Have To Be A Caricature Of What A Politician Is Supposed To Be Like.

We All Believe That We Are A Certain Kind Of Person, But We Never Know Until We Do Something That Proves Otherwise, Or Until We Die.

There Are Two Ways To Look At Life. The First View Is That Nothing Stays The Same And That Nothing Is Inherently Connected, And That The Only Driving Force In Anyone's Life Is Entropy. The Second Is That Everything Pretty Much Stays The Same (more Or Less) And That Everything Is Completely Connected, Even If We Don't Realize It.

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What My Mom Failed To Understand Was That I Didn't Even Want Long Hair -- I Needed Long Hair. And My Desire For Protracted, Flowing Locks Had Virtually Nothing To Do With Fashion, Nor Was It A Form Of Protest Against The Constructions Of Mainstream Society. My Motivation Was Far More Philosophical. I Wanted To Rock.

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In The Eight Years I Worked At Newspapers, Even During A Little Stretch When I Was A Film Critic, I Was Never, Ever Doing Exclusively Criticism. In The Daily Newspaper World, Much More Value Is Placed On Reporting Than On Thinking Abstractly About Art. The Eight Years I Was In Newspapers, I Was Mainly A Journalist In The Conventional Sense, And Just Doing Criticism When There Were Opportunities.

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I Think That Most Technology Is Positive In The Short Term, And Negative In The Long Term. I Wonder, If Somebody Looked Back At The 20th And 21st Centuries A Thousand Years From Now, What Their Perception Of The Car Would Be. Or Of Television. I Wonder If Over Time, They'll Be Seen As This Thing That Drove The Culture, But Ultimately Had More Downside Than Upside.

My Mind And Gut Are Never Simpatico: Every Time I Think Somebody Likes Me, She Doesn't; Every Time I Think Somebody Doesn't Like Me, She Does. This Has Never Changed And I'm Certain It Never Will.

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.

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Ability To Change

And I Spilled Gravy On My Carolina Sweater, Because I Am Alive.

If You Don't Have A Job, You Don't Have A Fear Of Losing It. You Fear Having To Get One.

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Film And Television

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That's Like Comparing Apples With Hermaphroditic Ground Sloths.

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As Of Right Now, I Am In Love With Her, And That Love Is The Biggest Problem In My Life.

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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.

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The Falling Flakes Were Random And Without Purpose; The Snow Was Drunker Than She Was.

The Goal Of Being Alive Is To Figure Out What It Means To Be Alive.

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.

The Biggest Problem In Rock Journalism Is That Often The Writers Main Motivation Is To Become Friends With The Band. Theyre Not Really Journalists; Theyre People Who Want To Be Involved In Rock And Roll.

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.

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Cars Are The Most Central Thing In America, In A Lot Of Ways. They've Probably Influenced The Way We Live More Than Anything Else, And Yet Every Really Big Problem - Whether It's The Environment Or Who Dictates The International Economy Because Of Oil - Is All Tied To Cars. Ultimately, Cars Are Bad For Civilization. I Don't Know If They'll End Us.

The Things He Did On Purpose Were Usually No Different From The Mistakes He Made By Accident.

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.

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.

Somewhere, At Some Point, Somehow, Somebody Decided That Death Equals Credibility.

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.

No Woman Will Ever Satisfy Me. I Know That Now, And I Would Never Try To Deny It. But This Is Actually Okay, Because I Will Never Satisfy A Woman, Either. Should I Be Writing Such Thoughts? Perhaps Not. Perhaps It’s A Bad Idea. I Can Definitely Foresee A Scenario Where That First Paragraph Could Come Back To Haunt Me, Especially If I Somehow Became Marginally Famous.

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Book Writing Is A Little Different Because, In My Case, My Editor Is A Year Younger Than Me And Basically Has The Same Sensibility As Me.

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.

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.

It Feels So Exhausting To Be So Bad At Something I Loved So Much.

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.

Relationships Ending

I Feel Like 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.

I Cannot Imagine The Type Of Sinister Fiend Who Would Be Against The Library. A Library Essentially Says, 'look, Here Is Some Free Information That Will Enrich Your Life. Read It On Your Own Time. I Trust That You Will Bring It Back When You Are Finished.' It Might Be The Most Civilized, Forward-thinking Institution In America. Perhaps The Only One, In Fact.

We Assume That All Statements Must Be Mild Inversions Of The Truth, Because It's Too Weird To Imagine People Who Aren't Casually Lying, Pretty Much All The Time.

It's Possible This Whole "why Do Latinos Love Morrisey?" Question Will Haunt Us Forever. Fortunately, Canadian Academics Are On The Case.

I Tend To Equate Sadness With Intelligence.

Being Interesting Has Been Replaced By Being Identifiable.

[on Political Correctness:] Any Intended Message Mattered Less Than The Received Message, And Every Received Message Could Be Interpreted In Whatever Way The Receiver Wanted.

I Think People's Relationship With The Concept Of Violence Changes, And That To Me Might Be A Little More Interesting.

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.

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.

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.

Every One Of Joel's Important Songs--including The Happy Ones--are Ultimately About Loneliness. And It's Not 'clever Lonely' (like Morrissey) Or 'interesting Lonely' (like Radiohead); It's 'lonely Lonely,' Like The Way It Feels When You're Being Hugged By Someone And It Somehow Makes You Sadder.

Every Time I Learn The Truth About Something, I’m Disappointed

I Used To Watch A Lot Of Documentaries About Satanic Possession - And I Don't Know If This Is Racist Or Not - But In The Documentaries, It Never Happened To Americans! It Was Always Happening In Central America Or South America; That's Where The Priest Was Always Going Down To Exorcise Possessed People. So I Didn't Have A Lot Of Fear Of Being Possessed By The Devil.

I Want Fake Love. But That's All I Want, And That's Why I Can't Have It.

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.

This Made Her Remember Why People Take Up Walking: It Is Because They No Longer Have Anywhere To Go.

I Care About Strangers When They're Abstractions, But I Feel Almost Nothing When They're Literally In Front Of Me.

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.

I Think People Feel Very Comfortable Reviewing The Idea Of Me, As Opposed To What I've Actually Written. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Sure There's A Percentage Of People Who Are Like, "it Snowed In May. I Don't Believe In Climate Change." Well, That's Crazy, But That's Always Gonna Be The Case. I Suppose If Climate Change Happens Much Faster Than Even The Dire Experts Predict, Then I Suppose Opinions Will Change.

It's Peculiar What You Remember When You're Not Trying.

The Last Girl I Love Will Be Someone I Haven’t Even Met Yet, Probably.

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.

Every Relationship Is Fundamentally A Power Struggle, And The Individual In Power Is Whoever Likes The Other Person Less.

I Get Enjoyment Out Of Writing, But I Get Absolutely No Enjoyment Out Of Rewriting, So I Don't Do Much Of It. The More You Work On Something, Certainly, The Better It Gets. But There's Also A Pretty Clear Law Of Diminishing Returns. It Drives Me Crazy To Do Readings Of My Books, Because If I Read Anything I've Written In The Past, I'd Like To Almost Rewrite Everything.

We’re All Tourists, Sort Of. Life Is Tourism, Sort Of. As Far As I’m Concerned, The Dinosaurs Still Hold The Lease On This Godforsaken Rock.

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.

If Someone Breaks Your Heart, Just Punch Them In The Face. Oh Sure, It Seems Obvious Now, But You'd Be Amazed At How Many People Don't Think Of It When It's Relevant. Seriously, Punch Them In The Face And Go Get Some Ice Cream.

Outcasts May Grow Up To Be Novelists And Filmmakers And Computer Tycoons, But They Will Never Be The Athletic Ruling Class.

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.

In Some Ways, Halloween Is Much Easier For Women. They Can Just Dress As Sluts, And It's Kind Of A Costume, If They Never Do Any Other Time.

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Maybe It Takes Forty Years Of Your Life To Understand How The World Seems To Work.

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.

If You Play "i Don't Want To Know" By Fleetwood Mac Loud Enough -- You Can Hear Lindsey Buckingham's Fingers Sliding Down The Strings Of His Acoustic Guitar. ...and We Were Convinced That This Was The Definitive Illustration Of What We Both Loved About Music; We Loved Hearing The Inside Of A Song.

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.

Every Generation Is More Influenced By Technology, Which Is Always Changing Faster.

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.

Important Things Are Inevitably Cliche, But Nobody Wants To Admit That.

It Appears That Countless Women Born Between The Years Of 1965 And 1978 Are In Love With John Cusack. I Cannot Fathom How He Isn't The Number-one Box Office Star In America, Because Every Straight Girl I Know Would See Her Soul To Share A Milkshake With That Motherfucker.

But It Goes Without Saying That Michael Jordan Could Never Date Pamela Anderson. That Would Cause The Apocalypse.

Who Am I? Or (perhaps More Accurately) Who Else Could Be Me?

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.

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.

This Is What Being Alive Feels Like, You Know? The Place Doesn't Matter. You Just Live.

A Lot Of People Have This Strategy Where If They Have A Hard Question They Wait To Ask It To The End Of The Interview Because They Think The Person Is Going To Walk Out. But What They Have To Realize Is, Is That If The Person Walks Out, They Have A Pretty Successful Story.

The Essays Are Very Solipsistic And Self-absorbed, I'm Totally Conscious Of That. To Me, Book Writing Is Fun, And I Basically Just Write About Things That Are Entertaining To Myself.

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Instead, We Were Given A Publication Called The Weekly Reader, Which Was Like A Newspaper For Four-foot Illiterates.

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.

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.

The Villain Is The Person Who Knows The Most But Cares The Least.

I Love Sports, But I Don't Like Live Sporting Events, Because I Don't Like Sitting In The Crowd. I Like Listening To Records, But I Don't Like Going To Concerts, Because I Don't Like Standing In The Crowd. I Guess I Just Don't Like Being In The Crowd Itself.

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.

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.

What's Hard To Do Is Describe Why You Like Something. Because Ultimately, The Reason Things Move People Is Very Amorphous. You Can Be Cerebral About Things You Hate, But Most Of The Things You Like Tend To Be Very Emotive.

I Was A Teenager In The '80s - And Maybe I'm Wrong About This - But It Seemed Like A Bad Era For Movies That Were Scary. It Was Really The Height Of Movies That Were Disgusting.

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.

The Thing That Has Always Baffled Me About People's Perception Of My Writing Is The Sense That I'm A Very Controversial, Opinionated, Polarizing Person. I Feel Like I Write About Things That I'm Interested In, And I Describe Why They're Interesting To Me. I Could Be Negative, I Guess. It's Far Easier To Write Why Something Is Terrible Than Why It's Good.

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.

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.

Internet Porn Makes Everything More Reasonable -- Once You've Realized There Is A Massive Subculture Of Upwardly Mobile People Who Think It's Erotic To See An Asian Woman Giving A Hand Job To A Javelina, Nothing Else In The World Seems Crazy.

Sarcasm Is When You Tell Someone The Truth By Lying On Purpose.

To Me, Fear Of The Future Means Fear Of Technology. I Have A Little Bit Of That. I Still Use It, But I Kind Of See Technology As This Harmful Thing That's So Ingrained In My Life That It Sort Of Dictates And Controls My Relationship With It.

I Almost Never Get Lonely. I Love Being Alone. I'm Glad I'm Married, And I Love My Wife. But There's Never Been A Situation In My Life Where My Unhappiness Was Based On Loneliness.

I Am Ready To Be Alone.

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

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.

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.

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.

First, You Must Love Yourself. And If You Do That Convincingly Enough, Others Will Love You Too Much.

It Doesn't Matter What You Can Do If You Don't Know Why You're Doing It.

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.

The People Who Review My Books, Generally, Are Kind Of Youngish Culture Writers Who Aspire To Write Books. 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.

People Are More Interested In Reading Bombastic Ideas, Whether They're Positive Or Negative. Part Of Me Has Sort Of Lost Interest In Doing Criticism Because Of That. I've Always Realized That Criticism Is Basically Autobiography. Obviously In My Criticism, It's Very Clear That It's Autobiography, But I Think It's That Way For Everybody.

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

Mostly, We Argued About Who Which Of Us Was Better At Arguing, And Particularly About Who Had Won The Previous Argument.

It Is Important To Have Questionable Friends You Can Trust Unconditionally.

Everybody Is Wrong About Everything, Just About All The Time.

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.

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.

What's Kind Of Happening Is The Conflict Over Football Might Be A Class Conflict Where There Is A Percentage Of People Who Have No Relationship To Physicality And A Percentage Of The Populace Who Still Does.

Art And Love Are The Same Thing: It’s The Process Of Seeing Yourself In Things That Are Not You.

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.

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.

The Reason That People In The Intellectual Community Argue That Football Is Dangerous Is Because There's Now A Large Swath Of Society That Has No Relationship To Physicality Or Potential Violence.

I Love Music, Right? I Can't Say "i'm Only Going To Listen To A Physical Medium," Because There's A Bunch Of Meaningful Records That As A Music Fan I Love That I Would've Never Been Able To Access. So If I Want To Be Part Of Something I Have To Get Dragged Along With Technology.

I Doubt That Pornography Has Been Good For The Advancement Of Society, But I Suspect It’s Done Wonders For The Advancement Of Computer Technology.

If I Knew I Was Going To Die At A Specific Moment In The Future, It Would Be Nice To Be Able To Control What Song I Was Listening To; This Is Why I Always Bring My Ipod On Airplanes.

It Might Sound Chauvinistic, But There Is A Sad Reality In Rock Music: Bands Who Depend On Support From Females Inevitably Crash And Burn.

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.

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.

What Is Going To Happen In The Course Of My Day That Will Be An Improvement Over Lying On Something Very Soft, Underneath Something Very Warm, Wearing Only Underwear, Doing Absolutely Nothing, All By Myself?

I Think A Bigger Difference With Social Media Is Going To Be Things Like The Impact Instagram Will Have For Historians. For The Longest Time, We Had No Images Of The Past. And Then When We Had The Advent Of The Camera, We Had A Record Of The Things People Chose To Photograph, Which, For A While, Were Portraits Of Your Family, A New Building We Built, Or A Really Big Horse. Well Now We Have Images Of Everything. That Will Be The Biggest Difference I Think - That We Will Have A Visual Record Of This Reality In A Way That Will Be Completely Covered.

What's Hard To Do Is Describe Why You Like Something. Because Ultimately, The Reason Things Move People Is Very Amorphous. You Can Be Cerebral About Things You Hate, But Most Of The Things You Like Tend To Be Very Emotive. It's Really Hard To Do A Literary Reproduction Of What Makes You Happy. That's What I Try To Do. If Nothing Else, It Seems Like There's Enough People Out There Telling The World What Isn't Cool, Or What's Terrible, Or What's Depressing. I Think There's An Element Of Cynicism In My Writing, But I'm An Optimistic Cynic.

Different Critics Go To Different Lengths To Disagree With That Sentiment, But Ultimately, They're The Person Experiencing This Art, And Whatever Judgment Or Taste They Use Is Internal, And Says More About Them Than About The Record They're Writing About.

Gay Marriage Should Be Legalized In America Because Gay Men Are The Only Men Who Want To Be Married.

I Can Tell When I've Met A Bad Journalist When They Say, "i've Met Madonna," Or "i Know Marilyn Manson." Because I Haven't Met Anyone I've Ever Interviewed. I've Sat Down In The Position Of An Interviewer, And They've Sat Down In The Position Of An Artist Trying To Promote A Product. We Have No Relationship. I'm Able To Ask Them Questions I'd Never Be Allowed To Ask Them If We Were Casual Friends. It's A Completely Constructed Kind Of Situation.

We Would Sit In The Living Room, Drink A Case Of Busch Beer, And Throw The Empty Cans Into The Kitchen For No Reason Whatsoever, Beyond The Fact That It Was The Most Overtly Irresponsible Way For Any Two People To Live.

Maybe I Don't Need A Relationship After All, She Thought. Maybe Thinking About These Conversations Was Just As Good As Having Them. She Could Sit In Her Honda In The Dark And Experience Whatever Kind Of Life She Wanted. Sometimes You Think, Hey, Maybe There's Something Else Out There. But There Really Isn't. This Is What Being Alive Feels Like, You Know? The Place Doesn't Matter. You Just Live.

People Hate The Feeling That Technology Is Dragging Them Into The Future, That They're Not Really Following What's Happening, But Being Forced To Be Involved. Even If It Makes Their Life Better, It Still Feels Like It's Happening Against Their Will.

We All Eventually Become Whatever We Pretend To Hate.

Styx And The Stones May Break My Bones But 'more Than Words' Will Never Hurt Me

Everyone Knows History Is Written By The Winners, But That Cliche Misses A Crucial Detail: Over Time, The Winners Are Always The Progressives. Conservatism Can Only Win In The Short Term, Because Society Cannot Stop Evolving (and Social Evolution Inevitably Dovetails With The Agenda Of Those Who See Change As An Abstract Positive). It Might Take Seventy Years, But It Always Happens Eventually. Serious Historians Are, Almost Without Exception, Self-styled Progressives. Radical Views--even The Awful Ones--improve With Age.

When Arthur Schlesinger Sr. Pioneered The 'presidential Greatness Poll' In 1948, The Top Five Were Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, And Jefferson. Only Wilson Appears To Be Seriously Fading, Probably Because His Support For The World War I-era Sedition Act Now Seems Outrageous; In This Analogy, Woodrow Is Like The Doors And The Sedition Act Is Oliver Stone.

I Think One Of The Many Interesting Things About [donald] Trump Is That People In The Media Did Not Take Him Seriously For Months. Then, When It Was Clear He Was Going To Be The Nominee, They Immediately Hit The Panic Button. I Think They Overlook The Possibility That He Could Just Be A Really Bad President In The Way That Presidents Are Traditionally Bad.

People Who Talk About Their Dreams Are Actually Trying To Tell You Things About Themselves They’d Never Admit In Normal Conversation.

If You’re The Type Of Person Who Wants To Associate Exclusively With Those Who Perfectly Mirror Your Own Ethical Worldview, You’re Reducing Significantly The Scope Of Your Potential Life Experience.

Life Experience

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.

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Theodore Hesburgh

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