Chuck Klosterman X Quotes

“Equally bizarre is the way both groups perceive themselves as the oppressed minority who are fighting against dominant public opinion, although I suppose that has become the way most Americans think about everything.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“I'm sure I could have read the entire four-thousand-page plot summarized in four hundred words on Wikipedia, or I could simply walk into any high school and ask a few questions of the first kid I find who isn't smoking crystal meth.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“If you can't empathize with Charlie Brown, you likely lack an ability to empathize with any fictional character. Here is a child continually humiliated for desiring nothing more than normalcy - the opportunity to kick a football, the aptitude to fly a kite, the freedom to walk down the sidewalk without having a random acquaintance compare his skull to a block of lumber.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“Once people decide they want you to do something, they don't really care what your qualifications are.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“Have you ever listened to regular rain, pelting a bedroom window as you drift off to sleep? Annoying! I feel like I’ve heard enough.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“When Bryant dies, the accusation will probably appear in the second paragraph of his obituary. And he knows this.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“Eddie Van Halen doesn’t listen to music.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“Yet this explains as much as everything else he told me: There is music, and there is everything else. And if other people can’t understand that, he feels no need to explain.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“The rain falls on the just and the unjust. And as Charles M. Schulz once noted, that’s a good system, no matter how it makes us feel.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“technology has made the ability to remember things irrelevant. Intellectually, having a deep memory used to be a real competitive advantage. Now it’s like having the ability to multiply four-digit numbers in your head—impressive, but not essential.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“Maybe things don’t become meaningful unless we’re willing to repeat our interaction with whatever that “thing” truly”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“The principal downside to any zombie attack is that the zombies will never stop coming; the principal downside to life is that you will never truly be finished with whatever it is you do.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“Now hitting on all sixteen cylinders, the Beatles bolted back to the woodshed for The Beatles, a blandly designed masterwork that could inspire any reasonable California citizen to launch a race war.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“The so-called Rad Four donned comedic Technicolor dream coats, consumed seven hundred sheets of mediocre acid on the roof of the studio, and proceeded to make Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a ground breaking record no one actually likes.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“If you like harmonies or guitar overdubs or the sun or Norwegian lesbians or taking drugs during funerals or the invention of sound, you will probably enjoy these records. Rubber Soul gets an A- because I don't speak French.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“I will live forever, or at least until I'm forty-five.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“I have a colleague who feels anyone over the age of twenty-one caught reading a Harry Potter novel should be executed without trial, but that strikes me as unreasonable; the fact that they're written for British thirteen-year-olds probably means they're the right speed for 90 percent of American adults.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“The possibility of parents and children sharing the same cultural interests has increased dramatically over the past twenty-five years; today, the central bifurcation is how that communal culture is accessed and interpreted and experienced.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“Roughly 5.3 million people watched the first episode of "The Walking Dead" on AMC, a stunning 83 percent more than the 2.9 million who watched the season four premiere of "Mad Men." This means there are at least 2.4 million cable-ready Americans who would prefer watching Christina Hendricks if she were an animated corpse.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“But part of me knows there’s an intangible downside to having complete intellectual detachment from whatever most Americans consider to be common knowledge.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

“Once people decide they want you to do something, they don’t really care what your qualifications are. However you describe yourself becomes proof that you’re the ideal candidate. This is true in journalism, and in life.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century