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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.

-Nick Hornby

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We All Spend So

Nick Hornby

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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

Reading Begets Reading.

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.

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.

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

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.

[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?

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

Is It Wrong, Wanting To Be At Home With Your Record Collection? It's Not Like Collecting Records Is Like Collecting Stamps, Or Beermats, Or Antique Thimbles. There's A Whole World In Here, A Nicer, Dirtier, More Violent, More Peaceful, More Colorful, Sleazier, More Dangerous, More Loving World Than The World I Live In; There Is History, And Geography, And Poetry, And Countless Other Things I Should Have Studied At School, Including Music.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Being Depressed

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

...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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Radio Football Is Football Reduced To Its Lowest Common Denominator.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Have A Really Low Boredom Threshold.

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

Truth Will Set You Free

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.

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.

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

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.

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

And Mostly All I Have To Say About These Songs Is That I Love Them, And Want To Sing Along To Them, And Force Other People To Listen To Them, And Get Cross When These Other People Don't Like Them As Much As I Do.

...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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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!)

Sequels Are Very Rarely A Good Idea, And In Any Case, The Success Of The Book Changed My Relationship With The Club In Some Ways.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

The Kind Of Love My Mum Talks About Is Full Of Worry And Work And Forgiving People And Putting Up With Things And Stuff Like That. It's Not A Lot Of Fun, That's For Sure. If That Really Is Love, The Kind My Mum Talks About, Then Nobody Can Ever Know If They Love Somebody, Can They? It Seems Like What She's Saying Is, If You're Pretty Sure You Love Somebody, The Way I Was Sure In Those Few Weeks, Then You Can't Love Them, Because That Isn't What Love Is. Trying To Understand What She Means By Love Would Do Your Head In.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

So Now What? What Happens When Words Fail Us?

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 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.

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 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.

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

Reciprocation Was A Pretty Powerful Stimulant To The Imagination.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

No Man Is An Island.

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

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.

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.

The Plain State Of Being Human Is Dramatic Enough For Anyone

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?

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

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.

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

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.

It Takes A Child To Say The Unsayable.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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

Look At All The Things That Can Go Wrong For Men. There’s The Nothing-happening-at-all Problem, The Too-much-happening-too-soon Problem, The Dismal-droop-after-a-promising-beginning Problem; There’s The Size-doesn’t-matter-except-in-my-case Problem, The Failing-to-deliver-the-goods Problem…and What Do Women Have To Worry About? A Handful Of Cellulite? Join The Club. A Spot Of I-wonder-how-i-rank? Ditto.

[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.

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?

You Can Wait Forever For The Muse To Sit On Your Shoulder, But Most Of The Time You Know What Has To Be Done And Inspiration Is Not Going To Help You.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

What Went Wrong? Nothing And Everything.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

...self-consciousness Is A Man's Worst Enemy.

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

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

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.

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

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'.

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.

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?

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John F. Kennedy

Reinhold Niebuhr

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