'That`s the point of us. You have potencial. I`m here to bring it out.'
'As a human being. You have all the basic ingredients. You´re really very likeable, when you put your mind to it. You make people laugh, when you can be bothered, and you`re kind, and when you decide you like someone then that person feels as though she`s the centre of the whole world, and that`s very sexy feeling. It`s just tha most of the time you can`t be bothered.'
'No,' is all I can think of to say.
'You just... you just don`t do anything. You get lost in your head, and you sit around thinking instead of getting on with something, and most of the time you think rubbish. You always seem to miss what`s really happening.'
'This is the second Simply Red song on this tape. One`s unforgivable. Two`s a war crime. Can I fast forward?' I fast foward without waiting for a reply. I stop on some terrible post-Motown Diana Ross thing, and I groan. Laura ploghs on regardelss.
'Do you know that expression, "Time on his gand an him-self on his mind"? That`s you.'
'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. You`ll be lying on your deathbed, dying of some something I could back out of and all the time you`re keeping your options open, you`re closing them off. You`re thirty-six and you don`t have children. So when are you going to have them? When you`re forty? Fifty? Say you`re forty, and say your kid doesn`t want kids untils he`s thirty-six. That`s mean you`d have to live much longer than your allotted three-socre years and ten just to catch so much as a glimpse of your grandchilde. See how you`re denying yourself things?'
Nick Hornby - High Fidelity.