Chuck Klosterman

It is impossible to examine questions we refuse to ask.

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.

And I'm probably wrong. Maybe not completely, but partially. And maybe not today, but eventually.

It's difficult to cope with the infinite variety of the past, and so we apply filters and settle on a few famous names.

And if something is only itself, it doesn't particularly matter.

The practical reality is that any present-tense version of the world is unstable. What we currently consider to be true--both objectively and subjectively--is habitually provisional.

In Western culture, virtually everything is understood through the process of storytelling, often to the detriment of reality. When we recount history, we tend to use the life experience of one person _ the __ourney_ of a particular __ero,_ in the lingo of the mythologist Joseph Campbell _ as a prism for understanding everything else.

The deeper reality is that I__ not sure if what I do is real. I usually believe that I__ certain about how I feel, but that seems naive. How do we know how we feel?_There is almost certainly a constructed schism between (a) how I feel, and (b) how I think I feel. There__ probably a third level, too__ow I want to think I feel.

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.

But I still feel like I lost.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 the 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 in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real-but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.

Record sales don't matter when the people who bought the records are dead and gone.

In a roundabout way, Boba Fett created Pearl Jam.

It might sound chauvinistic, but there is a sad reality in rock music: Bands who depend on support from females inevitably crash and burn.

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.

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.

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.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If cavemen had known how to laugh, history would have been different.

History is defined by people who don__ really understand what they are defining.