High Fidelity Quotes

“Unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it's just a drag, like a cold or having no money. If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“What came first _ the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“...those places are reserved for the kind of humiliations are heartbreaks that you're just not capable of delivering. That probably sounds crueler than it is meant to, but the fact is that we're too old to make each other miserable, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing...”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into a camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe this character then?”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“What came first--the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“All my life I wanted to go to bed with an American, and now I had, and I'm beginning to see why people don't do it more often.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“(to father) Aren't you glad that you've never had to buy vegeterian cookery books as the first small step on the road to getting inside someone's knickers?
(father) ...however vegeterian recepies you have read, you still have more fun than we were ever allowed.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“This is a song by Emmylou Harris called ‘Boulder to Birmingham,’” she announces. “It’s on the album Pieces of the Sky, which Rob is selling this afternoon for the unbelievable price of five pounds and ninety-nine pence, and you can find it right over there in the ‘Country Artists (Female)’ section.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

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

“not even sex, especially not sex, please God not sex, the filthiest and most terrifying invention of the early seventies.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Of course, I have never had to take that long walk again, and my ears have not burned with quite the same fury, and I have never had to count the packs of cheap cigarettes in order to avoid mocking eyes and floods of tears…not really, not actually, not as such. It just feels that way, sometimes.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“if I do OK with women, it’s not because of the virtues I have, but because of the shadows I don’t have.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“She had been dumped a couple of years before by a sort of male equivalent to Charlie, a guy called Michael who wanted to be something at the BBC. (He never made it, the wanker, and each day we never saw him on TV or heard him on the radio, something inside us rejoiced.)”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Top five things I miss about Laura...Two: she's got character...she's loyal and honest, and she doesn't even take it out on people when she's having a bad day. That's character.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“«Ecco che senso ha stare insieme. Tu hai un certo potenziale. E io sono qui per farlo emergere.»”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“There was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it’s just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who’d believe in this character then? I”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breasts that I would try to touch her between her legs, a gesture that had a sort of self-parodying wit about it: it was like trying to borrow a fiver, getting turned down, and asking to borrow fifty quid instead. These”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Women who disapprove of men—and there’s plenty to disapprove of—should remember how we started out, and how far we have had to travel. 3.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“...not even sex, especially not sex, please God not sex, the filthiest and most terrifying invention of the early seventies.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Here’s how not to plan a career: (a) split up with girlfriend; (b) junk college; (c) go to work in record shop; (d) stay in record shops for rest of life.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“If she came into my shop, I might really get to like her, and then I’d be waiting for her to come in all the time, and then when she did come in I’d be nervous and stupid, and probably end up asking her out for a drink in some cackhanded roundabout way, and either she wouldn’t catch my drift, and I’d feel like an idiot, or she’d turn me down flat, and I’d feel like an idiot.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Fuck. I hate all this stuff. How old do you have to get before it stops?”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Is it so wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection?”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“la musica sentimentale ha un grande potere: ti riporta indietro nel momento stesso in cui ti porta avanti, così che provi, contemporaneamente, nostalgia e speranza.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Charlie on omandanud sellise tähtsuse, et mul on tunne, nagu peaks ta elama Marsil, nii et katsed temaga suhelda maksakasid miljoneid naelu ja jõuaksid temani alles valgusaastate pärast. Ta on maaväline olend, vaim, müüt, mitte inimene, kellel on automaatvastaja ja roostes wok-pann ja kahe metrootsooni kuukaart.”
― 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. I”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“All I know is that you could, if you wanted to, find the answers to all sorts of difficult questions buried in that terrible war-torn interregnum between the first pubic hair and the first soiled Trojan.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“This, it seems, is what you get for sleeping with an American, all this up-front goodwill. You wouldn't catch a decent British woman marching in here after a one-night stand. We understand that these things are, on the whole, best forgotten. But I suppose Marie wants to talk about it, explore what went wrong; there's probably some group-counseling workshop she wants us to go to, with lots of other couples who spent a misguided one-off Saturday night together. We'll probably have to take our clothes off and reenact what happened, and I'll get my sweater stuck round my head.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“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