Emma > Emma's Quotes

“I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“It's brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as mere consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“…I've had a bad week."
What's happened?"
Nothing's happened. I've had a bad week in my head, is all.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can’t afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You’ve got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you’ve got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you’re compelled to start all over again. Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.”
― Nick Hornby

“Have you got any soul?" a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I've got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a better balance, but I can't seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn't be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it. ”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Is it wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection? It's not like collecting records is like collecting stamps, or beermats, or antique thimbles. There's a whole world in here, a nicer, dirtier, more violent, more peaceful, more colorful, sleazier, more dangerous, more loving world than the world I live in; there is history, and geography, and poetry, and countless other things I should have studied at school, including music.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“It's a mystery of human chemistry and I don't understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“my friends don't seem to be friends at all but people whose phone numbers I haven't lost.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“That’s why; he’s worried about how his life is turning out, and he’s lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“One day, maybe not in the next few weeks, but certainly in the conceivable future, someone will be able to refer to me without using the word 'arse' somewhere in the sentence. ”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“She thought I was...soulful, by which I think she means that I don't say much and I always look vaguely pissed off.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“I don't even feel as if I'm the center of my own world, so how am I supposed to feel as though I'm the center of anyone else's?”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“What went wrong? Nothing and everything.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“I guess I should have forgotten about it ages ago, but forgetting isn't something I'm very good at.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“You just have to smile and take it, otherwise it would drive you mad.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“I'm simply pointing out that what happens to us isn't the whole story. That I continue to exist even when we're not together.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Maybe that's what love is, I thought: it's being pissed off.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood