#thematicideas

[mrwrightsenglishclass]

That's where I've been going wrong. I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself.

--Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (318)

[mrwrightsenglishclass]

But tonight, I have to confess (but only to myself, obviously) that maybe, given the right set of peculiar, freakish, probably unrepeatable circumstances, it's not what you like but what you're like that's important. I'm not going to be the one who explains to Barry how this might happen, though.

--Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (280)

[mrwrightsenglishclass]

But when you're sitting in a one-bedroom flat in Crouch End and your business is going down the toilet and your girlfriend's gone off with the guy from the flat upstairs, a starring role in a real-life episode of thirtysomething, with all the kids and marriages and jobs and barbecues and k.d. lang CDs that this implies, seems more than one could possibly ask of life.

--Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (278)

[mrwrightsenglishclass]

She gives a short, mirthless laugh. 'It's no wonder we're all in 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.  And it's much worse in real life, because it's not just snogging and bunk beds, is it? There's all this as well.'

--Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (251)

[mrwrightsenglishclass]

It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs.  We made them into life, which is much messier, and more time-consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

--Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (132)

[mrwrightsenglishclass]

But 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 (117)

[mrwrightsenglishclass]

You walk much more quickly [after leaving a record shop in which you wasted too much time], trying to recapture the part of the day that has escaped, and quite often you have the urge to read the international section of a newspaper, or go to see a Peter Greenaway film, to consume something solid and meaty which will lie on top of the cotton-candy worthlessness clogging up your head.

--Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (96)

[mrwrightsenglishclass]

Is it so 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 (83)