High Fidelity (film)

"Read any womens magazine and youll find the same complaint over and over again: men are not interested in foreplay and they are hopeless in bed. They are selfish, greedy, clumsy, and unsophisticated. These complaints I cant help feeling are kind of ironic cause back then, all we wanted was foreplay and girls werent interested. We were told not to even think about it. Foreplay changes from being something that boys want to do and girls dont, to something that women want and men cant be bothered with. The perfect couple, if you ask me, is the Cosmo woman and the fourteen-year old b-b-b-boy."

"It made sense to pool our collective loathing for the opposite sex, and while we were doing that, share a bed with someone at the same time. Only people of a certain disposition are sure theyre going to be alone for the rest of their lives at age 26, and we were of that disposition."

"It would be nice to think that since I was 14 times have changed, relationships have become more sophisticated, females less cruel, skins thicker, instincts more developed, but there seems to be an element of that afternoon in everything thats happened to me since. All my romantic stories are a scrambled version of that first one."

"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. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I dont know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that theyve been listening to the sad songs longer than theyve been living the unhappy lives."

"My desert island, all-time, top-five most memorable breakups, in chronological order, are as follows: Alison Ashmore; Penny Hardwick; Jackie Alden; Charlie Nicholson; and Sarah Kendrew. Those were the ones that really hurt. [Yelling to Laura out the window] Can you see your name on that list, Laura? Maybe youd sneak into the top ten. But theres just no room for you in the top five, sorry. Those places are reserved for the kind of humiliation and heartbreak youre just not capable of delivering."

"Top five things I miss about Laura. One; sense of humor. Very dry, but it can also be warm and forgiving. And shes got one of the best all time laughs in the history of all time laughs, she laughs with her entire body. Two; shes got character. Or at least she had character before the Ian nightmare. Shes loyal and honest, and she doesnt even take it out on people when shes having a bad day. Thats character. Three; I miss her smell, and the way she tastes. Its a mystery of human chemistry and I dont understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home. [lipsyncs four, while holding up four fingers] I really dig how she walks around. Its like she doesnt care how she looks or what she projects and its not that she doesnt care its just, shes not affected I guess, and that gives her grace. And five; she does this thing in bed when she cant get to sleep, she kinda half moans and then rubs her feet together an equal number of times... it just kills me. Believe me, I mean, I could do a top five things about her that drive me crazy but its just your garden variety women you know, schizo stuff and thats the kind of thing that got me here."

"The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up is hard to do. It takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch. But you dont want to blow your wad. So then you gotta cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway, Ive started to make a tape, in my head, for Laura. Full of stuff shed like. Full of stuff thatd make her happy. For the first time I can sorta see how thats done."

"Its brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like."

"I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like... Books, records, films—these things matter. Call me shallow but its the fuckin truth, and by this measure I was having one of the best dates of my life."

"We have one of those conversations where everything clicks, meshes, corresponds, locks, where even our pauses, even our punctuation marks, seem to be nodding in agreement."

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

"I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And thats suicide. By tiny, tiny increments."