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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.

-Nick Hornby

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I Have Always Been

Nick Hornby

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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.

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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?

I May Not Know The Weight Of Those Things, But I Could Feel The Weight Of That One, So I Kept It To Myself. 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 Suppose It's Why You Feel So Far Away From Everyone, In The End; Anything You Can Think Of To Tell Them Just Ends Up Making Them Feel Terrible.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

Every Time People Force Themselves To Carry On With A Book They're Not Enjoying, They Reinforce The Idea That Reading Is A Duty.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

(about Organizing Books In His Home Library, And Putting A Book In The "arts And Lit Non-fiction Section) I Personally Find That For Domestic Purposes, The Trivial Pursuit System Works Better Than Dewey.

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

What Good Were Real Feelings Anyway?

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

Being Depressed

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

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?

Human Beings Are Millions Of Things In One Day.

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.

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

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

Over The Last Couple Of Years, The Photos Of Me When I Was A Kid... Well, They've Started To Give Me A Little Pang Or Something - Not Unhappiness, Exactly, But Some Kind Of Quiet, Deep Regret... I Keep Wanting To Apologize To The Little Guy: "i'm Sorry, I've Let You Down. I Was The Person Who Was Supposed To Look After You, But I Blew It: I Made Wrong Decisions At Bad Times, And I Turned You Into Me.

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

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.

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

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

Books Are, Let's Face It, Better Than Everything Else. If We Played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, And Made Books Go Fifteen Rounds In The Ring Against The Best That Any Other Art Form Had To Offer, Then Books Would Win Pretty Much Every Time.

Asking The Head I Have Now To Explain Its Own Thinking Is As Pointless As Dialing Your Own Telephone Number On Your Own Telephone: Either Way, You Get An Engaged Signal. Or Your Own Answer Message, If You Have That Kind Of Phone System.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

No Man Is An Island.

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

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.

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.

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.

[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?

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

Loving People, And Allowing Yourself To Be Loved, Was Only Worth The Risk If The Odds Were In Your Favor, But They Quite Clearly Weren't. 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. So How Smart Did You Have To Be To Work Out That It Just Wasn't Worth The Risk?

I Used To Believe, Although I Don't Now, That Growing And Growing Up Are Analogous, That Both Are Inevitable And Uncontrollable Processes. Now It Seems To Me That Growing Up Is Governed By The Will, That One Can Choose To Become An Adult, But Only At Given Moments. These Moments Come Along Fairly Infrequently -during Crises In Relationships, For Example, Or When One Has Been Given The Chance To Start Afresh Somewhere- And One Can Ignore Them Or Seize Them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

But The Internet Had Changed Everything: Nobody Was Forgotten Anymore.

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.

I See Now That Dismissing Ya Books Because You're Not A Young Adult Is A Little Bit Like Refusing To Watch Thrillers On The Grounds That You're Not A Policeman Or A Dangerous Criminal, And As A Consequence, I've Discovered A Previously Ignored Room At The Back Of The Bookstore That's Filled With Masterpieces I've Never Heard Of.

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?

Most People Have A Rope That Ties Them To Someone, And That Rope Can Be Short Or It Can Be Long. (be Long. Belong. Get It?) You Don't Know How Long, Though. It's Not Your Choice.

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

What Went Wrong? Nothing And Everything.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

There Had Been Times When He Knew, Somewhere In Him, That He Would Get Used To It, Whatever It Was, Because He Had Learnt That Some Hard Things Became Softer After A Very Little While.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I Hate Time. It Never Does What You Want It To.

So Now What? What Happens When Words Fail Us?

Everyone Disliked Their Partners At Some Time Or Another, She Knew That. But She’d Spent Her Hours In The Dark Wondering Whether She’d Ever Liked Him. Would It Really Have Been So Much Worse To Spend Those Years Alone? Why Did There Have To Be Someone Else In The Room While She Was Eating, Watching Tv, Sleeping?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I Have A Really Low Boredom Threshold.

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.

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.

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?

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.

I'd Thought I'd Live With My Wife, But I Couldn't Find One.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

[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.

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?

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.

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.

The Point Is You Keep Going. You Want To. So All The Things That Make You Want To Are The Point.

...you Can Find People. It's Like Those Acrobatic Displays.... Those Ones When You Stand On Top Of Loads Of People In A Pyramid. It Doesn't Really Matter Who They Are, As Long As They're There And You Don't Let Them Go Away Without Finding Someone Else.

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.

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.

The Chief Attraction Of The Opposite Sex For All Of Us, Old And Young, Men And Women: We Need Someone To Save Us From The Sympathetic Smiles In The Sunday-night Cinema Queue, Someone Who Can Stop Us From Falling Down Into The Pit Where The Permanently Single Live With Their Mums And Dads.

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.

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.

Not For The First Time In My Life, And Certainly Not For The Last, A Self-righteous Gloom Had Edged Out All Semblance Of Logic.

We Are Never Allowed To Forget That Some Books Are Badly Written; We Should Remember That Sometimes They're Badly Read, Too.

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.

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

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.

...so Please, Be Tolerant Of Those Who Describe A Sporting Moment As Their Best Ever. We Do Not Lack Imagination, Nor Have We Had Sad And Barren Lives; It Is Just That Real Life Is Paler, Duller, And Contains Less Potential For Unexpected Delirium.

Radio Football Is Football Reduced To Its Lowest Common Denominator.

The Plain State Of Being Human Is Dramatic Enough For Anyone

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

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

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.

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.

But What Else Can We Do When We're So Weak? We Invest Hours Each Day, Months Each Year, Years Each Lifetime In Something Over Which We Have No Control; It Is Any Wonder Then, That We Are Reduced To Creating Ingenious But Bizarre Liturgies Designed To Give Us The Illusion That We Are Powerful After All, Just As Every Other Primitive Community Has Done When Faced With A Deep And Apparently Impenetrable Mystery?

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

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

The Artistic Temperament Is Particularly Unhelpful If It Is Just That, With No End Product.

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.

[...] 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

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.

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.

Reciprocation Was A Pretty Powerful Stimulant To The Imagination.

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.

Barry, You're Over Thirty Years Old. You Owe It To Your Mum And Dad Not To Sing In A Group Called Sonic Death Monkey.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

It Takes A Child To Say The Unsayable.

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.

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

We Had No Irony When It Came To Girls, Though. There Was Just No Time To Develop It. One Moment They Weren't There, Not In Any Form That Interested Us, Anyway, And The Next You Couldn't Miss Them; They Were Everywhere, All Over The Place. One Moment You Wanted To Clonk Them On The Head For Being Your Sister, Or Someone Else's Sister, And The Next You Wanted To....actually, We Didn't Know What We Wanted Next, But It Was Something. Almost Overnight, All These Sisters (there Was No Other Kind Of Girl, Not Yet)had Become Interesting, Disturbing, Even.

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

Truth Will Set You Free

(about Love)the Most Important Thing In Life, And You Can't Tell Whether People Have It Or Not. Surely This Is Wrong? Surely People Who Are Happy Should Look Happy, At All Times, No Matter How Much Money They Have Or How Uncomfortable Their Shoes Are Or How Little Their Child Is Sleeping; And People Who Are Doing Ok But Have Still Not Found Their Soul-mate Should Look, I Don't Know, Anxious, Like Billy Crystal In When Harry Met Sally; And People Who Are Desperate Should Wear Something, A Yellow Ribbon Maybe, Which Would Allow Them To Be Identified By Similar Desperate People.

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

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.

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.

Even Bad Times Have Good Things In Them To Make You Feel Alive.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A Middle-aged Woman Who Looked Like Someone's Cleaning Lady, A Shrieking Adolescent Lunatic And A Talkshow Host With An Orange Face... It Didn't Add Up. Suicide Wasn't Invented For People Like This. It Was Invented For People Like Virginia Woolf And Nick Drake. And Me. Suicide Was Supposed To Be Cool.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Reading Begets Reading.

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)

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?

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.

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?

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Michael Ignatieff

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