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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.

-Chuck Klosterman

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To Me, Fear Of

Chuck Klosterman

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

But Whenever I Meet Dynamic, Nonretarded Americans, I Notice That They All Seem To Share A Single Unifying Characteristic: The Inability To Experience The Kind Of Mind-blowing, Transcendent Romantic Relationship They Perceive To Be A Normal Part Of Living. And Someone Needs To Take The Fall For This. So Instead Of Blaming No One For This (which Is Kind Of Cowardly) Or Blaming Everyone (which Is Kind Of Meaningless), I'm Going To Blame John Cusack.

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.

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.

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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.

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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. If I Could, I'd Completely Rewrite Fargo Rock City, And Every Sentence Would Be Just Slightly Different. In All Likelihood, Most Of Them Wouldn't Be Any Better. Some Of Them Would Just Be Changed Back To Whatever Form They Used To Be, Before I Second-guessed Myself The First Time.

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.

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.

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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.

Nine Inch Nails Were The Best And Most Popular Industrial Band Of All Time; As A Consequence, Industrial Purists Usually Assert That Nine Inch Nails Aren't An Industrial Band At All (this Is A Counterintuitive Phenomenon That Tends To Occur With Purists From All Subcultures, Musical Or Otherwise).

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

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.

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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.

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I'd Ask People To Keep In Mind The Idea That If You Really Understand Something, It's Even More Important For You To Consider The Possibility Of Your Wrongness. Even If It Takes Someone Dumber Than You To Point That Out.

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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.

...i've Spent The Last Fifteen Years Of My Life Railing Against The Game Of Soccer, An Exercise That Has Been Lauded As "the Sport Of The Future" Since 1977. Thankfully, That Future Dystopia Has Never Come.

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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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The Only People Who Think The Internet Is A Calamity Are People Whose Lives Have Been Hurt By It; The Only People Who Insist The Internet Is Wonderful Are Those Who Need It To Give Their Life Meaning.

Anybody Who Says They Are A Good Liar Obviously Is Not, Because Any Legitimately Savvy Liar Would Always Insist They're Honest About Everything.

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.

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.

Real People Are Actively Trying To Live Like Fake People, So Real People Are No Less Fake. Every Comparison Becomes Impractical. This Is Why The Impractical Has Become Totally Acceptable; Impracticality Almost Seems Cool.

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.

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

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 Tend To Equate Sadness With Intelligence.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

That's Like Comparing Apples With Hermaphroditic Ground Sloths.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Being Interesting Has Been Replaced By Being Identifiable.

I Hate Motorcycles. Because If I Hit One, Even If It's Not My Fault, If I've Done Nothing Wrong, I'm Not Charged With Manslaughter, He's Gonna Die, Because He's On A Motorcycle. So I Have To Live My Life Knowing That I Killed This Guy.

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.

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.

The Worst Thing You Can Do To Anybody Trying To Be Creative Is To Demand Participation In Their Vision.

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.

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.

Without A Soundtrack, Human Interaction Is Meaningless.

The Strength Of Your Memory Dictates The Size Of Your Reality

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.

[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.

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

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

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

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 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.

When Given The Choice, We’d All Rather Be Happy Now … Even If That Guarantees We’ll All Be Sad Later.

Football Allows The Intellectual Part Of My Brain To Evolve, But It Allows The Emotional Part To Remain Unchanged. It Has A Liberal Cerebellum And A Reactionary Heart. And This Is All I Want From Everything, All The Time, Always.

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.

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

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

Americans Have Become Conditioned To Believe The World Is A Gray Place Without Absolutes; This Is Because We’re Simultaneously Cowardly And Arrogant. We Don’t Know The Answers, So We Assume They Must Not Exist. But They Do Exist. They Are Unclear And/or Unfathomable, But They’re Out There. And—perhaps Surprisingly—the Only Way To Find Those Answers Is To Study Nba Playoff Games That Happened Twenty Years Ago. For All Practical Purposes, The Voice Of Brent Musburger Was The Pen Of Ayn Rand.

Observing Someone Without Context Amplifies The Experience. The More We Know, The Less We Are Able To Feel.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Film And Television

Even Eternally Free People Are Enslaved By The Process Of Living.

I Once Loved A Girl Who Almost Loved Me, But Not As Much As She Loved John Cusack.

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.

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 Far Easier To Write Why Something Is Terrible Than Why It's Good. If You're Reviewing A Film And You Decide "this Is A Movie I Don't Like," Basically You Can Take Every Element Of The Film And Find The Obvious Flaw, Or Argue That It Seems Ridiculous, Or Like A Parody Of Itself, Or That It's Not As Good As Something Similar That Was Done In A Previous Film. 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.

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

I Guess It Really Didn't Even Dawn On Me That You Could Be A Rock Critic As A Job Until I Was Maybe Almost Out Of College. I Knew Criticism Existed. I Read Rolling Stone And Spin. Siskel And Ebert Were On Television. But I Had Absolutely No Idea How To Get That Kind Of Life. And Moreover, It Didn't Interest Me That Much. I Just Sort Of Read Normal Books Growing Up. I Wasn't That Media-conscious. I Felt Like The One Thing I Was Able To Do Was To Listen To A Record And Decide Whether I Liked It.

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

I Was Fortunate That I Was At Newspapers For Eight Years, Where I Wrote At Least Five Or Six Stories Every Week. You Get Used To Interviewing Lots Of Different People About A Lot Of Different Things. And They Aren't Things You Know About Until You Do The Story.

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.

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.

It Was The Kind Of Love You Can Only Feel Toward Someone You Don't Actually Know.

Booze Is The Greatest Of All Equalizers. Rich Drunks And Poor Drunks Both Pass Out The Same Way.

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.

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

A Homeless Man Once Told Me That Dancing To Rap Music Is The Cultural Equivalent Of Masturbating, And I'd Sort Of Fell The Same Way About Playing John Madden Football Immediately After Filing My Income Tax: It's Fun, But - Somehow - Vaguely Pathetic.

I Feel Sorry For People Who Have To Edit Me. Which Is Why Book Writing Is By Far The Most Enjoyable. Really The Only Thing It's Based On Is Whether It's Good Or Not. No Book Editor, In My Experience, Is Getting A Manuscript And Trying To Rewrite It.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Mass Media Causes Sexual Misdirection: It Prompts Us To Need Something Deeper Than What We Want. This Is Why Woody Allen Has Made Nebbish Guys Cool; He Makes People Assume There Is Something Profound About Having A Relationship Based On Witty Conversation And Intellectual Discourse. There Isn't. It's Just Another Gimmick, And It's No Different Than Wanting To Be With Someone Because They're Thin Or Rich Or The Former Lead Singer Of Whiskeytown.

Because I'm 44, I Feel Kind Of Lucky That I Lived Through This Period Where I Started My Career Where There Was No Internet At All, And Now When I Finish It, There Will Be Nothing But The Internet.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

I Like Storms. I Would Say I Actively Like Stormy Weather. I Would Not Be Afraid Of Them. I Think That If I Had Not Pursued Journalism, I Think Storm-chasing Would've Been A Really Fun Career.

-- 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 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 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.

We Argued About How Hard It Would Be To Ride A Bear, Assuming Said Bear Was Muzzled.

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

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

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