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My Top Five 'High Fidelity' Quotes

On Music ---------- - - - - - - - - - -

• Rob: 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?

• Rob: Liking both Marvin Gaye and Art Garfunkel is like supporting both the Israelies and the Palestinians.
  Laura: No, it's really not, Rob. You know why? Because Marvin Gaye and Art Garfunkel make pop records.
  Rob: Made. Made. Marvin Gaye is dead. His father shot him.

• Barry: Holy shite. What the fuck is that?
  Dick: It's the new Belle and Sebastian...
  Rob: It's a record we've been listening to and enjoying, Barry.
  Barry: Well, that's unfortunate, because it sucks ass.

• Barry: Rob, top five musical crimes perpetuated by Stevie Wonder in the 80s and 90s? Go... sub-question... is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins, is it better to burn out or fade away?

• Barry: We're no longer called Sonic Death Monkey. We're on the verge of becoming Kathleen Turner Overdrive, but just for tonight, we are Barry Jive and his Uptown Five.
  

On Relationships ---------- - - - - - - - - - -

• Rob: 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 that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.

• Rob: Should I bolt every time I get that feeling in my gut when I meet someone new? Well, I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.

• Laura: I'm too tired not to be with you.
  Rob: What, so if you had a bit more energy we'd stay split up, but things being as they are, with you being wiped out and all, you want to get back together? Is that it?
  Laura: Yeah.

• Rob: 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 that's happened to me since. All my romantic stories are a scrambled version of that first one.

• Rob: 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. Can you see your name on that list, Laura? Maybe you'd sneak into the top ten. But there's just no room for you in the top five, sorry. Those places are reserved for the kind of humiliation and heartbreak you're just not capable of delivering.
  

Various other High Fidelity quotes that amuse me...

• Rob: Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breast that I would try to touch her between her legs. It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down, and asking for 50 grand instead.

• Rob: I was jealous of other men in her design department. I became convinced that she was going to leave me for one of them. Then she left me for one of them.

• Laura: Listen, Rob, would you have sex with me? Because I want to feel something else than this. It either that, or I go home and put my hand in the fire. Unless you want to stub cigarettes out on my arm.
  Rob: No. I only have a few left, I've been saving them for later.
  Laura: Right. It'll have to be sex, then.
  Rob: Right. Right.

• Rob: If you *really* wanted to screw me up, you should've gotten to me *earlier*.

• Rob: How does an average guy like me become the number one lover man in his particular postal district?

• Dick: Marie de Salle's playing. You remember I told you about her. I like her. She's kind of Sheryl Crow-ish crossed with a post-Partridge Family pre-L.A. Law Susan Dey kind of thing, but, you know, uh, black.

• Rob: I could've wound up having sex back there. And what better way to exorcise rejection demons than to screw the person who rejected you, right? But you wouldn't be sleeping with a person, you'd be sleeping with the whole sad, single-person culture. It'd be like sleeping with Talia Shire in Rocky if you weren't Rocky.

• Barry: Rob, I'm telling you this for your own good, that's the worst fuckin' sweater I've ever seen, that's a Cosby sweater.

• Rob: Jon Dillinger was killed behind that theater in a hale of FBI gunfire. And do you know who tipped them off? His fucking girlfriend. All he wanted to do was go to the movies.

• Rob: 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 they're going to be alone for the rest of their lives at age 26, and we were of that disposition.
  

Two closing thoughts:

How could a woman say no to a guy who says...

• Rob: I'm tired of the fantasy, because it doesn't really exist. And there are never really any surprises, and it never really...
  Laura: Delivers?
  Rob: Delivers. And I'm tired of it. And I'm tired of everything else for that matter. But I don't ever seem to get tired of you, so....
  

And finally: How to make a mix-tape...

• Rob: To me, making a tape is like writing a letter. There's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind," but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules.
  

[from the movie High Fidelity Obviously I am not that Rob - grin]

::::: | Filed under: funny
::::: | Posted Friday, May 28 2004 at 2:12 PM
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