Here are some quotes from High Fidelity:

• ...and my friends don't seem to be friends at all but people whose phone numbers I haven't lost.

• ...I have a terrible, chilling, bone-shaking experience: the most pathetic man in the world gives me a smile of recognition. The Most Pathetic Man In The World has huge horn-rimmed spectacles and buckteeth; he's wearing a dirty fawn anorak and brown cord trousers which have been rubbed smooth at the knee; he, too, is being taken to see Howard's End by his parents, despite the fact that he's in his late twenties. And he gives me this terrible little smile because he has spotted a kindred spirit.

• "Have you slept with him yet?" and it's all over.
  "Is that why you wanted to see me?"
  "I guess."
  "Oh, Rob."
  I just want to ask the question again, straightaway; I want an answer, I don't want "Oh, Rob," and a pitying stare.
  "What do you want me to say?"
  "I want you to say that you haven't, and for your answer to be the truth."
  "I can't do that." She can't look at me when she's saying it, either.

• It must be hard for parents, I guess, when they see that things aren't working out for their children, but that their children can no longer be reached by the old parental routes, because those roads are now much too long.

• When I nestled into Laura's back in the night, I was afraid because I didn't want to lose her, and we always lose someone, or they lose us, in the end. I'd rather not take the risk. I'd rather not come home from work one day in ten or twenty years' time to be faced with a pale, frightened woman saying that she'd been shitting blood -- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but this is what happens to people -- and then we go to the doctor and then the doctor says it's inoperable and then . . . . I wouldn't have the guts, you know? I'd probably just take off, live in a different city under an assumed name, and Laura would check in to the hospital to die and they'd say, "Isn't your partner coming to visit?" and she'd say, "No, when he found out about the cancer he left me." Great guy! "Cancer? Sorry, that's not for me! I don't like it!" Best not to put yourself in that position. Best leave it all alone.

• I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.

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email: vogelap@email.uc.edu (Andrew Vogel)