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Did I Do And Say These Things? Yes, I Did. Are There Any Mitigating Circumstances? Not Really, Unless Any Circumstances {in Other Words, Context) Can Be Regarded As Mitigating. And Before You Judge, Although You Have Probably Already Done So, Go Away And Write Down The Four Worst Things You Have Done To A Partner, Even If - Especially If - Your Partner Doesn't Know About Them. Don't Dress Things Up, Or Try To Explain Them; Just Write Them Down, In A List, In The Plainest Language Possible. Finished? Ok, So Who's The Arsehole Now?

-Nick Hornby

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Did I Do And

Nick Hornby

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Did I Do And Say These Things? Yes, I Did. Are There Any Mitigating Circumstances? Not Really, Unless Any Circumstances {in Other Words, Context) Can Be Regarded As Mitigating. And Before You Judge, Although You Have Probably Already Done So, Go Away And Write Down The Four Worst Things You Have Done To A Partner, Even If - Especially If - Your Partner Doesn't Know About Them. Don't Dress Things Up, Or Try To Explain Them; Just Write Them Down, In A List, In The Plainest Language Possible. Finished? Ok, So Who's The Arsehole Now?

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I Have A Really Low Boredom Threshold.

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On New Year's Eve He Ould Make A Resolution To Recover Some His Previous Scepticism, But Until Then He Would Do As The Romans Do, And Smile At People Even If He Disapproved Of Them

I'm Coming To London Next Week, By The Way, In Unhappy Circumstances. Are We Getting On Fine As We Are? Or Would You Like A Drink?

But All Three Of Them Had Had To Lose Things In Order To Gain Other Things. Will Had Lost His Shell And His Cool And His Distance, And He Felt Scared And Vulnerable, But He Got To Be With Rachel; And Fiona Had Lost A Big Chunk Of Marcus, And She Got To Stay Away From The Casualty Ward; And Marcus Had Lost Himself, And Got To Walk Home From School With His Shoes On.

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.

When Even The Scrupulously Detached Bbc Is Exhorting Us To Talk To God, You Know Something Is Going On.

Why Does Reading Freak People Out So Much? Sure, I Could Be Pretty Anti-social When We Were On The Road, But If I Was Playing A Gameboy Hour After Hour, No One Would Be On My Case. In My Social Circle, Blowing Up Space Monsters Is Socially Acceptable In A Way That American Pastoral Isn't.

Tuesday Night I Reorganized My Record Collection. I Often Do This At Periods Of Emotional Stress. There Are Some People Who Would Find This A Pretty Dull Way To Spend An Evening, But I'm Not One Of Them. This Is My Life, And It's Nice To Be Able To Wade In It, Immerse Your Arms In It, Touch It.

For Alarmingly Large Chunks Of An Average Day, I Am A Moron.

It's Not What You Like But What You Are Like That's Important.

And We'd Had This Stupid Scene On The Street, And Even That Was Kind Of Cool, Because Sometimes It's Moments Like That, Real Complicated Moments, Absorbing Moments, That Make You Realize That Even Hard Times Have Things In Them That Make You Feel Alive.

A Good Compilation Tape, Like Breaking Up, Is Hard To Do And Takes Ages Longer Than It Might Seem. You've Got To Kick Off With A Killer, To Grab The Attention. Then You've Got To Take It Up A Notch, Or Cool It Off A Notch…oh, There Are A Lot Of Rules.

Cynicism Is Our Shared Common Language, The Esperanto That Actually Caught On, And Though I'm Not Fluent In It - I Like Too Many Things, And I'm Not Envious Of Enough People - I Know Enough To Get By.

It's Music Rage, Which Is Like Road Rage, Only More Righteous. When You Get Road Rage, A Tiny Part Of You Knows You're Being A Jerk, But When You Get Music Rage, You're Carrying Out The Will Of God, And God Wants These People Dead.

I Have Always Been Accused Of Taking The Things I Love - Football, Of Course, But Also Books And Records - Much Too Seriously, And I Do Feel A Kind Of Anger When I Hear A Bad Record, Or When Someone Is Lukewarm About A Book That Means A Lot To Me.

Several Months Later, And I Have Finally Read One Of The Three (books), Even Though I Wanted To Read All Three Of Them Immediately. What Happened In Between? Other Books, Is What Happened. Other Books, Other Moods, Other Obligations, Other Appetites, Other Reading Journeys.

I Have Always Been Accused Of Taking The Things I Love – Football, Of Course, But Also Books And Records – Much Too Seriously, And I Do Feel A Kind Of Anger When I Hear A Bad Record, Or When Someone Is Lukewarm About A Book That Means A Lot To Me. Perhaps It Was These Desperate, Bitter Men In The West Stand At Arsenal Who Taught Me How To Get Angry In This Way; And Perhaps It Is Why I Earn Some Of My Living As A Critic – Maybe It’s Those Voices I Can Hear When I Write. ‘you’re A Wanker, X.’ ‘the Booker Prize? The Booker Prize? They Should Give That To Me For Having To Read You.

She Was Trying To Say Something Else; She Was Trying To Say That The Inability To Articulate What One Feels In Any Satisfactory Way Is One Of Our Enduring Tragedies. It Wouldn't Have Been Much, And It Wouldn't Have Been Useful, But It Would Have Been Something That Reflected The Gravity And The Sadness Inside Her. Instead, She Had Snapped At Him For Being A Loser. It Was As If She Were Trying To Find A Handhold On The Boulder Of Her Feelings, And Had Merely Ended Up With Grit Under Her Nails.

I Have Less Time, Less Tolerance For Bullshit, More Interest In Good Taste, More Confidence In My Own Judgement. The Culture With Which I Surround Myself Is A Reflection Of My Personality And The Circumstances Of My Life, Which Is In Part How It Should Be.

Do You Ever Do That Thing Where You Lie In Bed And You Can't Sleep So You End Up Writing Out Recent Conversation You've Had? So They Look Like A Play?' Well You Should. It's Fun. I Keep Them. Look Through Them, Sometimes.

Complaining About Boring Football Is A Little Like Complaining About The Sad Ending Of King Lear: It Misses The Point Somehow.

It's Love This And Love That But Of Couse It's So Easy To Love Someone You Don't Know, Whether It's George Clooney Or Monkey. Staying Civil To Someone With Whom You've Ever Shared Christmas Turkey- Now There's A Miracle.

I Couldn’t Bear To Think About The Proper Future, So I Just Tried To Make Things Better For The Next Twenty Minutes Or So, Over And Over Again.

Definitely Avoid Going Out With Ugly Girls Who Say They Want To Be Models. Not Because They're Ugly, But Because They're Mad".

My Own Feeling About Jj, Without Knowing Anything About Him, Was That He Might Have Been A Gay Person, Because He Had Long Hair And Spoke American. A Lot Of Americans Are Gay People, Aren’t They? I Know They Didn’t Invent Gayness, Because They Say That Was The Greeks. But They Helped Bring It Back Into Fashion. Being Gay Was A Bit Like The Olympics: It Disappeared In Ancient Times, And Then They Brought It Back In The Twentieth Century. Anyway, I Didn’t Know Anything About Gays, So I Just Presumed They Were All Unhappy And Wanted To Kill Themselves.

I Have Learned Things From The Game. Much Of My Knowledge Of Locations In Britain And Europe Comes Not From School, But From Away Games Or The Sports Pages, And Hooliganism Has Given Me Both A Taste For Sociology And A Degree Of Fieldwork Experience. I Have Learned The Value Of Investing Time And Emotion In Things I Cannot Control, And Of Belonging To A Community Whose Aspirations I Share Completely And Uncritically.

As I Get Older, The Tyranny That Football Exerts Over My Life, And Therefore Over The Lives Of The People Around Me, Is Less Reasonable And Less Attractive.

I Love The Relationship That Anyone Has With Music ... Because There's Something In Us That Is Beyond The Reach Of Words, Something That Eludes And Defies Our Best Attempts To Spit It Out. ... It's The Best Part Of Us Probably.

Sometimes We Have To Be Judged By Our One-offs.

It Is A Strange Paradox That While The Grief Of Football Fans(and It Is Real Grief) Is Private - We Each Have An Individual Relationship With Our Clubs, And I Think That We Are Secretly Convinced That None Of The Other Fans Understands Quite Why We Have Been Harder Hit Than Anyone Else - We Are Forced To Mourn In Public, Surrounded By People Whose Hurt Is Expressed In Forms Different From Our Own.

And What Would Happen If We Never Read The Classics? There Comes A Point In Life, It Seems To Me, Where You Have To Decide Whether You're A Person Of Letters Or Merely Someone Who Loves Books, And I'm Beginning To See That The Book Lovers Have More Fun.

Reading Begets Reading.

One Could Argue That Most Of The Trouble In The World Is Caused By Introspection.

This Thing About Looking For Someone Less Different... It Only Really Worked, He Realized, If You Were Convinced That Being You Wasn't So Bad In The First Place.

That Was His Mother. When She Wasn't Crying Over The Breakfast Cereal, She Was Laughing About Killing Herself.

Sometimes It's Moments Like That, Real Complicated Moments, Absorbing Moments, That Make You Realize That Even Hard Times Have Things In Them That Make You Feel Alive. And Then There's Music, And Girls, And Drugs, And Homeless People Who've Read Pauline Kael, And Wah-wah Pedals, And English Potato Chip Flavors, And I Haven't Even Read Martin Chuzzlewit Yet... There's Plenty Out There.

Everything's Complicated, Even Those Things That Seem Flat In Their Bleakness Or Sadness.

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.

Indeed, There Is A Moment On The First Cd - The Electrifying Opening To "i Got Loaded," Which Sounds Like An R&b Standard But Isn't - When You Might Find Yourself Asking Whether Anyone Who Has Ever Been Smitten By Pop Music Can Fail To Have His Heart Stopped By The Chords, The Swing, And, Once Again, Steve Berlin's Wonderfully Greasy Sax.

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Maybe The Best Thing To Do With Favorite Books Is To Leave Them Be: To Achieve Such Exalted Position Means That They Entered Your Life At Exactly The Right Time, In Precisely The Right Place, And Those Conditions Can Never Be Recreated.

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So Now What? What Happens When Words Fail Us?

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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?

…i've Had A Bad Week." What's Happened?" Nothing's Happened. I've Had A Bad Week In My Head, Is All.

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Where Would David Copperfield Be If Dickens Had Gone To Writing Classes? Probably About Seventy Minor Characters Short, Is Where. (did You Know That Dickens Is Estimated To Have Invented Thirteen Thousand Characters? Thirteen Thousand! The Population Of A Small Town!)

There Were About Seventy-nine Squillion People In The World, And If You Were Very Lucky, You Would End Up Being Loved By Fifteen Or Twenty Of Them.

You Know That Things Aren't Going Well For You When You Can't Even Tell People The Simplest Fact About Your Life, Just Because They'll Presume You're Asking Them To Feel Sorry For You.

I Used To Think--and Given The Way We Ended Up, Maybe I Still Do--that All Relationships Need The Kind Of Violent Shove That A Crush Brings, Just To Get You Started And To Push You Over The Humps. And Then, When The Energy From That Shove Has Gone And You Come To Something Approaching A Halt, You Have To Look Around And See What You've Got. It Could Be Something Completely Different, It Could Be Something Roughly The Same, But Gentler And Calmer, Or It Could Be Nothing At All.

That Is Another Chamber Of My Heart That Shows No Electrical Activity - The Chamber That Used To Flicker Into Life When I Saw A Film That Moved Me, Or Read A Book That Inspired Me, Or Listened To Music That Made Me Want To Cry. I Closed That Chamber Myself, For All The Usual Reasons. And Now I Seem To Have Made A Pact With Some Philistine Devil: If I Don't Attempt To Re-open It, I Will Be Allowed Just Enough Energy And Optimism To Get Through A Working Day Without Wanting To Hang Myself.

It's Brilliant, Being Depressed; You Can Behave As Badly As You Like.

Being Depressed

I Really Don't Want To Be Boring, And So Many Books Are So Boring!

It's No Good Looking To Writers For Definitions Of What Constitutes Proper Writing, Because You Will Drive Yourself Crazy, And You Won't Find Anything That You Can Build Into A Coherent Whole.

By The Early Seventies I Had Become An Englishman - That Is To Say, I Hated England Just As Much As Half My Compatriots Seemed To Do.

Yes, Yes, I Know All The Jokes. What Else Could I Have Expected At Highbury? But I Went To Chelsea And To Tottenham And To Rangers, And Saw The Same Thing: That The Natural State Of A Football Fan Is Bitter Disappointment, No Matter What The Score.

Phone Calls Like Ours Only Happen When You've Spent Several Years Hurting And Being Hurt, Until Every Work You Utter Or Hear Becomes Coded And Loaded, As Complicated And Full Of Subtext As A Bleak And Brilliant Play.

Linda Seemed To Recognize Loneliness. Possibly She Could See It Sitting Opposite Her, Sipping Lager And Trying Not To Lose Its Temper. It Was An Illness, Loneliness-it Made You Weak, Gullible, Feebleminded.

All I Know Is That You Can Get Very Little From A Book That Is Making You Weep With The Effort Of Reading It. You Won’t Remember It, And You’ll Learn Nothing From It, And You’ll Be Less Likely To Choose A Book Over Big Brother Next Time You Have A Choice.

There Are Many Differences Between A Baby And An I-pod. And One Of The Biggest Is, No Ones Going To Mug You For Your Baby.

Did I Do And Say These Things? Yes, I Did. Are There Any Mitigating Circumstances? Not Really, Unless Any Circumstances {in Other Words, Context) Can Be Regarded As Mitigating. And Before You Judge, Although You Have Probably Already Done So, Go Away And Write Down The Four Worst Things You Have Done To A Partner, Even If - Especially If - Your Partner Doesn't Know About Them. Don't Dress Things Up, Or Try To Explain Them; Just Write Them Down, In A List, In The Plainest Language Possible. Finished? Ok, So Who's The Arsehole Now?

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.

My Friends Don't Seem To Be Friends At All But People Whose Phone Numbers I Haven't Lost.

I've Committed To Nothing...and That's Just Suicide...by Tiny, Tiny Increments.

[h]ow Was I Supposed To Get Excited About The Oppression Of Females If They Couldn't Be Trusted To Stay Upright During The Final Minutes Of A Desperately Close Promotion Campaign?

I'm Very Good At The Past. It's The Present I Can't Understand.

I’m Not The Smartest Guy In The World, But I’m Certainly Not The Dumbest. I Mean, I’ve Read Books Like "the Unbearable Lightness Of Being" And "love In The Time Of Cholera", And I Think I’ve Understood Them. They’re About Girls, Right? Just Kidding. But I Have To Say My All-time Favorite Book Is Johnny Cash’s Autobiography "cash" By Johnny Cash.

I'm Not Telling You That Suicidal People Aren't So Far Away From People Who Can Get By; I'm Telling You That People Who Can Get By Aren't So Far Away From Being Suicidal.

I Guess I Should Have Forgotten About It Ages Ago, But Forgetting Isn't Something I'm Very Good At.

Surely We All Occasionally Buy Books Because Of A Daydream We're Having - A Little Fantasy About The People We Might Turn Into One Day, When Our Lives Are Different, Quieter, More Introspective, And When All The Urgent Reading, Whatever That Might Be, Has Been Done. We Never Arrive At That Point, Needless To Say.

Telling Me I Can Do Anything I Want Is Like Pulling The Plug Out Of The Bath And Then Telling The Water It Can Go Anywhere It Wants. Try It, And See What Happens.

What Good Were Real Feelings Anyway?

We Spent All Those Years Talking About Stuff We Had In Common, And The Last Few Months Noticing All The Ways We Were Different And It Broke Both Of Our Hearts.

When Your Sad--like Really Sad--you Only Want To Be With Other People Who Are Sad.

He Loved Nirvana, But At His Age They Were Kind Of A Guilty Pleasure. All That Rage And Pain And Self-hatred! Will Got A Bit...fed Up Sometimes, But He Couldn't Pretend It Was Anything Stronger Than That. So Now He Used Loud Angry Rock Music As A Replacement For Real Feelings, Rather Than As An Expression Of Them, And He Didn't Even Mind Very Much. What Good Were Real Feelings Anyway?

When You Get Older, It Feels Like Happy Memories And Sad Memories Are Pretty Much The Same Thing. It Is All Just Emotion In The End. And Any Of It Can Make You Weep.

There Isn't So Much To Be Afraid Of, Out There. I Can Remember Thinking It Was Funny To Find That Out, On The Last Night Of My Life; I'd Spent The Rest Of It Being Afraid Of Everything.

Why Is Failure The First Thing I Think Of When I Find Myself In This Sort Of Situation? Why Can't I Just Enjoy Myself? But If You Have To Ask The Question, Then You Know You're Lost: Self-consciousness Is A Man's Worst Enemy. Already I'm Wondering Whether She's As Aware Of My Erection As I Am.

Reciprocation Was A Pretty Powerful Stimulant To The Imagination.

Radio Football Is Football Reduced To Its Lowest Common Denominator. Shorn Of The Game's Aesthetic Pleasures, Or The Comfort Of A Crowd That Feels The Same Way As You, Or The Sense Of Security That You Get When You See That Your Defenders And Goalkeeper Are More Or Less Where They Should Be, All That Is Left Is Naked Fear.

Because Music, Like Color, Or A Cloud, Is Neither Intelligent Nor Unintelligent - It Just Is. The Chord, The Simplest Building Block For Even The Tritest, Silliest Chart Song, Is A Beautiful, Perfect, Mysterious Thing, And When An Ill-read, Uneducated, Uncultured, Emotionally Illiterate Boor Puts A Couple Of Them Together, He Has Every Chance Of Creating Something Wonderful And Powerful. All I Ask Of Music Is That Is Sounds Good.

I Fell In Love With Football As I Was Later To Fall In Love With Women: Suddenly, Inexplicably, Uncritically, Giving No Thought To The Pain Or Disruption It Would Bring With It.

Falling In Love

Everyone Knows How To Talk, And No One Knows What To Say.

I'm Still Not A Very Good White Wine, But I'm Drinkable - You Could Put Me In A Punch, Anyway.

I Miss Him Like One Might Miss A Scar, Or Wooden Leg, Something Disfiguring But Characteristic.

You Wouldn't Believe That So Much Could Change Just Because A Relationship Ended.

Love, It Turns Out, Is As Undemocratic As Money, So It Accumulates Around People Who Have Plenty Of It Already: The Sane, The Healthy, The Lovable.

I Burst Into Tears And I Cry And Cry Until It Feels As Though It Is Not Salt And Water Being Squeezed From My Eyes, But Blood.

A Man Who Wants To Die Feels Angry And Full Of Life And Desperate And Bored And Exhausted, All At The Same Time; He Wants To Fight Everyone, And He Wants To Curl Up In A Ball And Hide In A Cupboard Somewhere. He Wants To Say Sorry To Everyone, And He Wants Everyone To Know Just How Badly They've All Let Him Down.

We All Spend So Much Time Not Saying What We Want, Because We Know We Can't Have It. And Because It Sounds Ungracious, Or Ungrateful, Or Disloyal, Or Childish, Or Banal. Or Because We're So Desperate To Pretend That Things Are Ok, Really, That Confessing To Ourselves They're Not Looks Like A Bad Move. Go On, Say What You Want. ... Whatever It Is, Say It To Yourself. The Truth Will Set You Free. Either That Or It'll Get You A Punch In The Nose. Surviving In Whatever Life You're Living Means Lying, And Lying Corrodes The Soul, So Take A Break From The Lies For Just One Minute.

For The Best Part Of 40 Years She Had Genuinely Believed That Not Doing Things Would Somehow Prevent Regret, When, Of Course, The Exact Opposite Was True.

The Plain State Of Being Human Is Dramatic Enough For Anyone; You Don't Need To Be A Heroin Addict Or A Performance Poet To Experience Extremity. You Just Have To Love Someone.

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.

What Harm Has He Ever Done To You?' 'you Know What Harm He's Done Me. He Offended Me With His Terrible Taste.

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

You Have To Work At Relationships. You Can’t Just Walk Out On Them Every Time Something Goes Wrong.

Human Beings Are Millions Of Things In One Day.

You Had To Live In Your Own Bubble. You Couldn't Force Your Way Into Someone Else's, Because Then It Wouldn't Be A Bubble Any More.

And It Isn't That I'm So Unhappy I Don't Want To Live Anymore. That's Not What It Feels Like. It Feels More Like I'm Tired And Bored And The Party's Gone On Too Long And I Want To Go Home. I Feel Flat And There Doesn't Seem To Be Anything To Look Forward To, So I'd Rather Call It A Day.

I Don't Think You Can Call It Stalking When It's Just Phone Calls And Letters And Emails And Knocking On The Door.

The Truth Will Set You Free. Either That Or It'll Get You A Punch In The Nose.

Truth Will Set You Free

One Thing About Great Art: It Made You Love People More, Forgive Them Their Petty Transgressions. It Worked In The Way That Religion Was Supposed To, If You Thought About It.

If You Really Wanted To Mess Me Up, You Should Have Got To Me Earlier.

To Me, Making A Tape Is Like Writing A Letter – There's A Lot Of Erasing And Rethinking And Starting Again, And I Wanted It To Be A Good One.

[...] Falling In Love With Someone Beautiful And Intelligent And The Rest Of It, Then Feeling Like A Blank Twit Put You At Something Of A Disadvantage.

Falling In Love

We Can't Be As Good As We'd Want To, So The Question Then Becomes, How Do We Cope With Our Own Badness?

She Thought I Was...soulful, By Which I Think She Means That I Don't Say Much And I Always Look Vaguely Pissed Off.

Life Isn't, And Has Never Been, A 2-0 Home Victory After A Fish And Chip Lunch.

I Was Still Owed An Explanation, I Thought, But So What? What Good Was It Going To Do Me? It Wouldn't Have Made Me Any Happier. It Was Like Scratching When You Have Chicken Pox. You Think It's Going To Help, But The Itch Moves Over, And Then Moves Over Again. My Itch Suddenly Felt Miles Away, And I Couldn't Have Reached It With The Longest Arms In The World. Realizing That Made Me Scared That I Was Going To Be Itchy Forever, And I Didn't Want That.

What Went Wrong? Nothing And Everything.

I Don't Want My Books To Exclude Anyone, But If They Have To, Then I Would Rather They Excluded The People Who Feel They Are Too Smart For Them!

Self-pity Is An Ignoble Emotion, But We All Feel It, And The Orthodox Critical Line That It Represents Some Kind Of Artistic Flaw Is Dubious, A Form Of Emotional Correctness.

When It Came Down To It, He Just Wasn't That Engaged. You Had To Be Engaged To Be A Vegetarian; You Had To Be Engaged To Sing "both Sides Now" With Your Eyes Closed; When It Came Down To It, You Had To Be Engaged To Be A Mother.

It's Just That None Of Us Had The Wit Or Talent To Make Them Into Songs. We Made Them Into Life, Which Much Messier, And More Time Consuming, And Leaves Nothing For Anybody To Whistle.

Most People Get Suicide, I Guess; Most People, Even If It's Hidden Deep Down Inside Somewhere, Can Remember A Time In Their Lives When They Thought About Whether They Really Wanted To Wake Up The Next Day. Wanting To Die Seems Like It Might Be A Part Of Being Alive.

Hey, Great Idea: If You Have Kids, Give Your Partner Reading Vouchers Next Christmas. Each Voucher Entitles The Bearer To Two Hours' Reading Time *while The Kids Are Awake*. It Might Look Like A Cheapskate Present, But Parents Will Appreciate That It Costs More In Real Terms Than A Lamborghini.

Just Because It's A Relationship, And It's Based On Soppy Stuff, It Doesn't Mean You Can't Make Intellectual Decisions About It. Sometimes You Just Have To, Otherwise You'll Never Get Anywhere. 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.

The Truth About Life Was That Nothing Ever Ended Until You Died, And Even Then You Just Left A Whole Bunch Of Unresolved Narratives Behind You.

Sometimes You Know You've Got A Chance With A Girl Because She Wants To Fight With You. If The World Wasn't So Messed Up, It Wouldn't Be Like That. If The World Was Normal, A Girl Being Nice To You Would Be A Good Sign, But In The Real World, It Isn't.

We Were Little Animals, Which Is Not To Imply That By The End Of The Week We Were Tearing Our Tank Tops Off; Just That, Metaphorically Speaking, We Had Begun To Sniff Each Other's Bottoms, And We Did Not Find The Odor Entirely Repellent.

You'll Remember Someone Who Broke Your Heart, And You'll Think To Yourself, 'oh Yes, I Remember How That Feels.' But You Can't.

Contemporary Poetry Is A Kind Of Reykjavik, A Place Where Accessibility And Intelligence Have Been Fighting A Cold War By Proxy For The Last Half-century.

I'm Human. That's How Humans Spend Their Time, Doing Shitty Things.

I Never Mind The Accusations Of Domesticity, As Long As People Recognise That All Of Us, Even The Luckiest, Will Live Lives In Which We Have Our Hearts Broken, Suffer The Loss Of Loved Ones, Worry Ourselves Half To Death About Our Kids.

He's At The Chocolate Teapot End Of The Competency Scale.

That’s The Thing With The Young These Days, Isn’t It? They Watch Too Many Happy Endings. Everything Has To Be Wrapped Up, With A Smile And A Tear And A Wave. Everyone Has Learned, Found Love, Seen The Error Of Their Ways, Discovered The Joys Of Monogamy, Or Fatherhood, Or Filial Duty, Or Life Itself. In My Day, People Got Shot At The End Of Films, After Learning Only That Life Is Hollow, Dismal, Brutish, And Short.

All The Books We Own, Both Read And Unread, Are The Fullest Expression Of Self We Have At Our Disposal. ... But With Each Passing Year, And With Each Whimsical Purchase, Our Libraries Become More And More Able To Articulate Who We Are, Whether We Read The Books Or Not.

Between The Ages Of Fourteen And Twenty-four, Foreplay Changes From Being Something That Boys Want To Do And Girls Don't, To Something That Women Want And Men Can't Be Bothered With. ... The Perfect Match, If You Ask Me, Is Between The Cosmo Woman And The Fourteen-year Old Boy.

I Don't Want Anyone Writing In To Point Out That I Spend Too Much Money On Books, Many Of Which I Will Never Read. I Know That Already. I Certainly Intend To Read All Of Them, More Or Less. My Intentions Are Good. Anyway, It's My Money. And I'll Bet You Do It Too.

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?

Radio Football Is Football Reduced To Its Lowest Common Denominator.

It Was Hopeless, Life, Really. It Was Set Up All Wrong.

I'm A Good Person. In Most Ways. But I'm Beginning To Think That Being A Good Person In Most Ways Doesn't Count For Anything Very Much, If You're A Bad Person In One Way.

No Man Is An Island.

The Truth About Autobiographical Songs, He Realized, Was That You Had To Make The Present Become The Past, Somehow: You Had To Take A Feeling Or A Friend Or A Woman And Turn Whatever It Was Into Something That Was Over, So That You Could Be Definitive About It. You Had To Put It In A Glass Case And Look At It And Think About It Until It Gave Up Its Meaning.

Books Are, Let's Face It, Better Than Everything Else.

But I Suspect That All Writers Come Up With Premises Of Some Kind, Fragments Of Narrative Or Scenarios, In The Course Of A Working Week.

Anyway, Who Lives A Rich And Beautiful Life That I Know? It's No Longer Possible, Surely, For Anyone Who Works For A Living, Or Lives In A City, Or Shops In A Supermarket, Or Watches Tv, Or Reads A Newspaper, Or Drives A Car, Or Eats Frozen Pizzas. A Nice Life, Possibly, With A Huge Slice Of Luck And A Little Spare Cash. And Maybe Even A Good Life If... Well, Let's Not Go Into All That. But Rich And Beautiful Lives Seem To Be A Discontinued Line.

I Never Really Recovered From The Shock Of Discovering That Women Do What We Do; They Save Their Best Pairs For The Nights When They Are Going To Sleep With Somebody. When You Live With A Woman, These Faded, Shrunken Tatty Scraps Suddenly Appear On Radiators All Over The House; Your Lascivious Schoolboy Dreams Of Adulthood As A Time When You Are Surrounded By Exotic Lingerie For Ever And Ever Amen...those Dreams Crumble To Dust.

You Spend Christmas At Somebody's House, You Worry About Their Operations, You Give Them Hugs And Kisses And Flowers, You See Them In Their Dressing Gown...and Then Bang, That's It. Gone Forever. And Sooner Or Later There Will Be Another Mum, Another Christmas, More Varicose Veins. They're All The Same. Only The Addresses, And The Colors Of The Dressing Gown, Change.

He Has The Personality Of A Child Prodigy, But No Discernable Talent.

I Suddenly Had A Little Epiphany: All The Books We Own, Both Read And Unread, Are The Fullest Expression Of Self We Have At Our Disposal.

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.

There's No Doubt That He's The Biggest Sports Star In The World Now. (on David Beckham)

I Love The Detail About The Workings Of The Human Heart And Mind That Only Fiction Can Provide - Film Can't Get In Close Enough.

We're Here For Such A Short Amount Of Time. Why Do We Spend Any Of It Building Sandcastles?

In Other Words, It's One Of Those Books You Thrust On Your Partner With An Incredulous Cry Of "this Is Me!

The Outward Manifestations Of An Inner Combustion Are Never Very Directed.

I Would Like My Personal Reading Map To Resemble A Map Of The British Empire Circa 1900.

You're Not Allowed To Say Anything About Books Because They're Books, And Books Are, You Know, God.

Clockers" Asks--almost In Passing, And There's A Lot More To It Than This--a Pretty Interesting Question: If You Choose To Work For The Minimum Wage When Everyone Around You Is Pocketing Thousands From Drug Deals, Then What Does That Do To You, To Your Head And To Your Heart? (hornby's Thoughts After Reading "clockers" By Richard Price)

I've Seen Men Like You In Doris Day Films, But I Never Thought They Existed In Real Life...the Men Who Can't Commit, Who Can't Say 'i Love You' Even When They Want To, Who Start To Cough And Sputter And Change The Subject. But Here You Are. A Living, Breathing Specimen. Incredible.

He Would Read Up On Parenting, If He Thought It Would Help, But His Errors Always Seemed Too Basic For The Manuals. "always Tell Your Kids They Have Siblings..." He Couldn't Imagine Any Child-raising Guru Taking The Trouble To Write That Down. Maybe There Was A Gap In The Market.

I Had Forgotten That Jess Felt About Long Words The Way That Racists Feel About Black People: She Hated Them, And Wanted To Send Them Back From Where They Came From.

I'd Stay There, Or Not, And I'd Eat, Or Not, And I'd Drink, Or Not, And Go Home, Or Not, And What I Did Or Didn't Do Wouldn't Matter To Anyone At All. And I Walked For Most Of The Day. Do People Get Sad On Holiday Sometimes? I Can Imagine They Do, Having All That Time To Think.

So This Is Supposed To Be About The How, And When, And Why, And What Of Reading -- About The Way That, When Reading Is Going Well, One Book Leads To Another And To Another, A Paper Trail Of Theme And Meaning; And How, When It's Going Badly, When Books Don't Stick Or Take, When Your Mood And The Mood Of The Book Are Fighting Like Cats, You'd Rather Do Anything But Attempt The Next Paragraph, Or Reread The Last One For The Tenth Time.

Hard Is Trying To Rebuild Yourself, Piece By Piece, With No Instruction Book, And No Clue As To Where All The Important Bits Are Supposed To Go.

We Have One Of Those Conversations Where Every Thing Clicks, Meshes, Corresponds, Locks, Where Even Our Pauses, Even Our Punctuation Marks, Seem To Be Nodding In Agreement.

Punctuation Marks

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.

Love And Charity Share The Same Root Word (caritas). How Is That Possible, When Everything In Our Recent History Suggest They Cannot Coexist, That They Are Antiethical, That If You Put The Two Of Them Together In A Sack They Would Bite And Scratch And Scream, Until One Of Them Is Torn Apart?

But Then, That Was The Trouble With Relationships Generally. They Had Their Own Temperature And There Was No Thermostat.

It Struck Him That How You Spent Christmas Was A Message To The World About Where You Were In Life, Some Indication Of How Deep A Hole You Had Managed To Burrow For Yourself

The Trouble With History Is That There Are Too Many People Involved

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.

So It's Not About What You Do. It Can't Be, Can It? It Has To Be About How You Are, How You Love, How You Treat Yourself And Those Around You, And That's Where I Get Eaten Up.

Record Stores Can't Save Your Life. But They Can Give You A Better One.

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.

One Has So Many More Opinions About What Has Gone Wrong Than About What Is Perfect.

I Can See That Now. I Can See Everything Once It’s Already Happened — I’m Very Good At The Past. It’s The Present I Can’t Understand.

I'd Like My Life To Be Like A Bruce Springsteen Song. Just Once. I Know I'm Not Born To Run, I Know That Seven Sisters' Road Is Nothing Like Thunder Road, But Feelings Can't Be Different, Can They?

Did You Know That Jacques Benveniste, One Of The World's Leading Homeopathic 'scientists', Now Claims That You Can Email Homeopathic Remedies? Yeah, See, What You Do Is You Can Take The 'memory' Of The Diluted Substance Out Of The Water Electromagnetically, Put It On Your Computer, Email It, And Play It Back On A Sound Card Into New Water. I Mean, That Could Work, Right?

Sarcasm And Compassion Are Two Of The Qualities That Make Life On Earth Tolerable.

I Don't Believe In Heaven Or Anything. But I Want To Be The Kind Of Person That Qualifies For Entry Anyway.

When You're Unhappy, I Guess Everything In The World - Reading, Eating, Sleeping - Has Something Buried Somewhere Inside It That Just Makes You Unhappier.

I Had To Nurture Those Doubts As If They Were Tiny, Sickly Kittens, Until Eventually They Became Sturdy, Healthy Grievances, With Their Own Cat Doors, Which Allowed Them To Wander In And Out Of Our Conversation At Will.

It Is The Act Of Reading Itself That I Miss, The Opportunity To Retreat Further And Further From The World Until I Have Found Some Space, Some Air That Isn't Stale, That Hasn't Been Breathed By My Family A Thousand Times Already.

We Get Together With People Because They're The Same Or Because They're Different, And In The End We Split With Them For Exactly The Same Reasons.

No Time Spent With A Book Is Ever Entirely Wasted, Even If The Experience Is Not A Happy One: There’s Always Something To Be Learned. It’s Just That, Every Now And Again, You Can Hit A Patch Of Reading That Makes You Feel As If You’re Pootling About. [...] But What Can You Do About It? We Don’t Choose To Waste Our Reading Time; It Just Happens. The Books Let Us Down.

What You Don't Catch A Glimpse Of On Your Wedding Day- Because How Could You?- Is That Some Days You Will Hate Your Spouse, That You Will Look At Him And Regret Ever Exhchanging A Word With Him, Let Alone A Ring And Bodily Fluids.

Unhappiness Really Meant Something Back Then. Now It's Just A Drag, Like A Cold Or Having No Money.

The Natural State Of The Football Fan Is Bitter Disappointment, No Matter What The Score.

An Official Statement From Liverpool Raised The Spectre Of A Future Where 'a Club's Rival Can Bring About A Significant Ban For A Top Player Without Anything Beyond An Accusation'. But On Hearing This, Many Manchester United Fans Would Have Been Asking For A Definition Of The Word 'rival'.

He'd Told Her It Was Just A Scratch And Got Cross When She Hadn't Offered Morphine.

You Don't Ask People With Knives In Their Stomachs What Would Make Them Happy; Happiness Is No Longer The Point. It's All About Survival; It's All About Whether You Pull The Knife Out And Bleed To Death Or Keep It In.

The Non-fiction Bestseller Lists Frequently Prove That We All Want To Know More About Everything, Even If We Didn't Know That We Wanted To Know - We're Just Waiting For The Right Person To Come Along And Tell Us About It.

Women Who Disapprove Of Men - And There's Plenty To Disapprove Of - Should Remember How We Started Out, And How Far We Had To Travel.

You Just Have To Smile And Take It, Otherwise It Would Drive You Mad.

It's Often The Way That People Who Take Their Work Seriously Laugh At Stupid Jokes; It's As If They Are Under-humored And, As A Consequence, Suffer From Premature Laugh-ejaculation.

...i Feel As Though I Made A Face And The Wind Changed, And Now I Have To Go Through Life Grimacing In This Horrible Way.

It's Just That Romance, With Its Dips And Turns And Glooms And Highs, Its Swoops And Swoons And Blues, Is A Natural Metaphor For Music Itself

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.

Like All Books That Have That Kind Of Momentum, It Starts From Word Of Mouth.

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.

Being A Reader Is Sort Of Like Being President, Except Reading Involves Fewer State Dinners, Usually. You Have This Agenda You Want To Get Through, But You Get Distracted By Life Events, E.g., Books Arriving In The Mail/world War Iii, And You Are Temporarily Deflected From Your Chosen Path.

Where's The Superficial? I Was, And Therefore Am, Dim, Gloomy, A Drag, Unfashionable, Unfanciable, And Awkward. This Doesn't Seem Like Superficial To Me. These Aren't Flesh Wounds. These Are Life-threatening Thrusts Into The Internal Organs.

[about Suicide] And Why Is It The Biggest Sin Of All? All Your Life You're Told That You'll Be Going To This Marvellous Place When You Pass On. And The One Thing You Can Do To Get You There A Bit Quicker Is Something That Stops You Getting There At All. Oh, I Can See That It's A Kind Of Queuejumping. But If Someone Jumps The Queue At The Post Office, People Tut. Or Sometimes They Say, “excuse Me, I Was Here First.” They Don't Say, “you Will Be Consumed By Hellfire For All Eternity.” That Would Be A Bit Strong.

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