by
Nick Hornby
View all notes
HIM: Good. So how shall we leave it then?
ME: We won't leave it, Ian. Or at least, I won't. I'd change your phone number, if I were you. I'd change your address. One day soon you'll look back on one visit to the house and ten phone calls a night as a golden age. Watch your step, boy. [Slams receiver down]
[...]
Oh well.
imagining a better comeback then "Dunno"
I'm not making any of this up. This is how she talks, as if nobody has ever had a conversation about this in the history of the world.
on Charlie talking about how children are time-consuming
[...] I have a sudden panic when I'm in there. The other coats on the bed are expensive, and for a moment I entertain the idea of going through the pockets and then doing a runner.
when he arrives at Charlie's
'Oh, right,' I say. 'I'm not very keen on dogs.'
None of them say anything for a while; there's not much they can say, really, about my lack of enthusiasm for dogs.
'Is that size of flat, or childhood fear, or the smell, or ...?' asks Clara, very sweetly.
'I dunno. I'm just ...' I shrug hopelessly, 'you know, not very keen.'
They smile politely.
As it turns out, this is my major contribution to the evening's conversation, and later on I find myself recalling the line wistfully as belonging to a Golden Age. [...]
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.
Charlie telling him why she chose Marco over him
[...] If I can't buy specially priced compilation albums for new girlfriends, then I might as well give up, because I'm not sure that I know how to do anything else.
Laura returning his gifts to her
I knew that Ken liked me, but I could never really work out why, apart from once he was looking for the original London cast recording of My Fair Lady, and I saw a copy at a record fair, and sent it to him. See where random acts of kindness get you? To fucking funerals, that's where.
[...] And when they do die it will hardly be the end of the world. Just, you know, wow, stop press, extremely ancient person dies. [...]
on his grandmothers
When I can't take it any more, when my white shirt is translucent and my jacket streaked with mud and Im gtting stabbing pains--cramp, or rheumatism, or arthritis, who knows?--in my legs, I stand up and brush myself off; and then Laura, who has obviously been sitting in her car by the bus stop all this time, winds down her window and tells me to get in.
trying to avoid Laura after the funeral
'So what should I be doing?'
'I don't know. Something. Working. Seeing people. Running a scout troop, or running a club even. Something more than waiting for life to change and keeping your options open. You'd keep your options open for the rest of your life, if you could. [...] And all the time you're keeping your options open, you're closing them off. [...]'