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.

— Chuck Klosterman

There is not, in a material sense, any benefit to being right about a future you will not experience. But there are intrinsic benefits to constantly probing the possibility that our assumptions about the future might be wrong: humility and wonder.

— Chuck Klosterman

There’s one kind of writing that’s always easy: Picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest form of criticism, easily accomplished by anyone. And for most of my life, I have tried to avoid this. In fact, I've spent an inordinate amount of time searching for the underrated value in ostensibly stupid things. I understand Turtle’s motivation and would have watched Medellin in the theater. I read Mary Worth every day for a decade. Furthermore, I’ve seen Born in concert three times and liked them once. Furthermore, I went to The Day After Tomorrow on opening night. Furthermore, I own a very expensive robot that doesn’t do anything. Furthermore, I am open to the possibility that everything has metaphorical merit, and I see no point in sardonically attacking the most predictable failures within any culture.

— Chuck Klosterman

The ultimate failure of the United States will probably not derive from the problems we see or the conflicts we wage. It will more likely derive from our uncompromising belief in the things we consider unimpeachable and idealized and beautiful. Because every strength is a weakness, if given enough time.

— Chuck Klosterman

The world happens as it happens, but we construct what we remember and what we forget. And people will eventually do that to us, too.

— Chuck Klosterman

TV takes away our freedom to have whatever thoughts we want. So do photographs, movies, and the Internet. They provide us with more intellectual stimuli, but they construct a lower, harder ceiling.

— Chuck Klosterman

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.

— Chuck Klosterman

We are losing the ability to understand anything that's even vaguely complex.

— Chuck Klosterman

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.

— Chuck Klosterman

We’re starting to behave as if we’ve reached the end of human knowledge. And while that notion is undoubtedly false, the sensation of certitude it generates is paralyzing.

— Chuck Klosterman