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from Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota by Chuck Klosterman:

p.12
Chain bookstores always amaze me, because it seems like someone has written a book about absolutely everything. I think that's why bookstores have become the hot place for single adults to hook up - bookstores have a built-in pickup line that always fits the situation. You simply walk up to any desirable person in the place, look at whatever section they're in, and you say (with a certain sense of endearing bewilderment), "Isn't it insane how many books there are about ____?" Fill in the blank with whatever subject at which the individual happens to be looking, and you will always seem perceptive.

p.18
Whenever people look back at their grammar school days, they inevitably insist that they remember feeling "safe" or "pure" or "hungry for discovery." Of course, the people who say these things are lying (or stupid, or both). It's revisionist history; it's someone trying to describe how it felt to be eleven by comparing it to how it feels to be thirty-one, and it has nothing to do with how things really were. When you actually are eleven, your life always feels exhaustively normal because your definition of "normal" is whatever is going on at the moment. You view the entire concept of "life" as your life, because you have nothing else to measure it to. Unless your mom dies or you get your foot caught in the family lawnmower, every part of childhood happens exactly as it should. It's the only way things can happen.

p.21
Like all great '80s music, [Shout at the Devil] was inadvertently post-modern: The significance of Shout at the Devil had nothing to do with the concepts it introduced; its significance was the concept of what it literally was.

p.22
John Hughes movies like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles were perfect period pieces for their era - all his characters were obsessed with overwrought, self-centered personal problems, exactly like the rest of us.

p.23
As long as I can remember, all good rock bands told lies about themselves and dressed like freaks; that was part of what defined being a "rock star." Motley Crue was a little more overt about following this criteria, but that only made me like them immediately.

p.31
Listening to Clapton is like getting a sensual massage from a woman you've loved for the past ten years; listening to Van Halen is like having the best sex of your life with three foxy nursing students you met at a Tastee Freez.

p.33
This may sound trite, but things really do slow down when you're about to have an auto wreck. There's that little moment of clarity where you remain spookily calm and find yourself thinking something ridiculously understated, such as, "Gosh, this is going to be problematic." But as soon as your paws instinctively clutch the steering wheel with nature's biological death grip, everything kicks into overdrive. The vehicle suddenly moves in three different directions at once, there is a horrific metallic sound coming from somewhere, and every fabric of your existence is pushing the brake pedal into the floorboard. The impact happens in half a moment and then - just as suddenly - everything stops and then you freak out. That's when it feels like your heart is going to explode, and you feel your hand shake as you inexplicably turn off the radio. The scariest part of any car accident is the first thirty seconds (when you realize you're not dead).

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More proof of how big a geek I am (not that there's anything wrong with that): while typing out the above quotes, I was looking at my notebook (not the screen), and I realized I type HTML along with text without any break in the thought process, as if tags are just another sort of punctuation mark.

Also funny: the spellchecker suggests 'Lenore' as a replacement for 'lawnmower.'