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5c0acf4
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Art and love are the same thing: It's the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.
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profound
love
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Chuck Klosterman |
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1e19834
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Life is rarely about what happened; it's mostly about what we think happened.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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f00af8a
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We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people i..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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8c1120e
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Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cad8c92
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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 ..
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relationships
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ee38597
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Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.
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wrong
opinions
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9bcc54f
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I love the way music inside a car makes you feel invisible; if you play the stereo at max volume, it's almost like the other people can't see into your vehicle. It tints your windows, somehow.
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power-of-music
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Chuck Klosterman |
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91939fe
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It is important to have questionable friends you can trust unconditionally.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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4097cd1
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I once loved a girl who almost loved me, but not as much as she loved John Cusack.
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relationships
love
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Chuck Klosterman |
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7de1a7c
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Important things are inevitably cliche, but nobody wants to admit that.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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09a3e04
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Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a ..
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good
virtues
hell
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Chuck Klosterman |
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0ff65fb
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Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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8b59221
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When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago--and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail--it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. It's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. It's almost like those things didn't happen. Or m..
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living
regret
remembering
nostalgia
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ed920e0
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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.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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43314de
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Do you know people who insist they like 'all kinds of music'? That actually means they like of music.
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music
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Chuck Klosterman |
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bcf9e5b
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It was the kind of love you can only feel toward someone you don't actually know.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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4b608d0
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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.
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music
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Chuck Klosterman |
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136f9e4
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It feels so exhausting to be so bad at something I loved so much.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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0e97fa1
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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.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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aa07780
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In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever in and of itself.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ce1c676
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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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Chuck Klosterman |
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b7b75a2
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I honestly believe that people of my generation despise authenticity, mostly because they're all so envious of it.
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chuck-klosterman
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Chuck Klosterman |
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dd3edcf
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I have never understood the concept of infatuation. It has always been my understanding that being 'infatuated' with someone means you think you are in love, but you're actually not; infatuation is (supposedly) just a foolish, fleeting feeling. But if being 'in love' is an abstract notion, and it's not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else... well, how is being in love any different than having an infatuation? ..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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99e7906
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If rain is God crying, I think God is drunk and his girlfriend just slept with Zeus.
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lightning
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Chuck Klosterman |
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dd880bf
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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?
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Chuck Klosterman |
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7a5dfe7
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Contrary to what you may have heard from Henry Rollins or/and Ian MacKaye and/or anyone else who joined a band after working in an ice cream shop, you can't really learn much about a person based on what kind of music they happen to like. As a personality test, it doesn't work even half the time. However, there is at least thing you learn: The most wretched people in the word are those who tell you they like every kind of music 'except ..
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personality
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Chuck Klosterman |
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3a1ef94
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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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relationships
love
media
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Chuck Klosterman |
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46cfcff
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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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Chuck Klosterman |
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8d9979b
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Every time I learn the truth about something, I'm disappointed
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Chuck Klosterman |
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8cef736
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The strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality
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Chuck Klosterman |
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f86d77f
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If you define your personality as creative, it only means you understand what is to be creative by the world at large, so you're really just following a rote creative template. That's the
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9cf8a38
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Here is the easiest way to explain the genius of Johnny Cash: Singing from the perspective of a convicted muderer in the song "Folsom Prison Blues,: Cash is struck by pangs of regret when he sits in his cell and hears a distant train whistle. This is because people on that train are "probably drinkin' coffee." And this is also why Cash seems completely credible as a felon: He doesn't want freedom or friendship or Jesus or a new lawyer. He w..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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e5c114c
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because people who talk about their dreams are actually trying to tell you things about themselves they'd never admit in normal conversation. It's a way for people to be honest without telling the truth.
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dreams
life
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Chuck Klosterman |
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603ca28
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When exactly did every housewife in America become a whore?
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women
whores
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Chuck Klosterman |
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1ffcd28
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Because when push comes to shove, we really don't want to have sex with our friends... unless they're sexy. And sometimes we do want to have sex with our blackhearted, soul-sucking enemies... assuming they're sexy.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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3dea1d9
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Everyone knows that the Internet is changing our lives, mostly because someone in the media has uttered that exact phrase every single day since 1993. However, it certainly appears that the main thing the Internet has accomplished is the normalization of amateur pornography. There is no justification for the amount of naked people on the World Wide Web, many of whom are clearly (clearly!) doing so for non-monetary reasons. Where were these ..
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sex
women
porn
internet
technology
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Chuck Klosterman |
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be38da7
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The villain is the person who knows the most but cares the least.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cb70f7e
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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.
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living
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Chuck Klosterman |
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03f66ca
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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.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b07f2e5
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Outcasts may grow up to be novelists and filmmakers and computer tycoons, but they will never be the athletic ruling class.
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sports
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Chuck Klosterman |
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87a1804
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Sarcasm is when you tell someone the truth by lying on purpose.
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lying
lies
humor
truth
sarcasm
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Chuck Klosterman |
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f1a119a
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Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves wanting that feeling for real. They want men to adore them like Lloyd Dobler would, and they want women to think like Aimee Mann, and they expect all their arguments to sound like Sam Malone and Diane Chambers. They think everything will work out perfectly in the end (just like it did for Helen Fielding's Brid..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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dc7d9b1
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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.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9e23b03
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I suppose we'll never know what really happened in that room, though he did tell police, "I did it because I'm a dirty dog." This is not a very convincing alibi. He may as well have said, "I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one."
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Chuck Klosterman |