Nick Hornby Quotes

Quotes about:

Age Art Books Children Emotions Failing Feelings

Record stores can't save your life. But they can give you a better one.

Nick Hornby

Giving, Records, Stores

52 Copy quote
All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.

Nick Hornby

Book, Self, Expression

Nick Hornby (2004). “The Polysyllabic Spree”, McSweeneys Books

58 Copy quote
I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal.

Nick Hornby

Book, Self, Expression

Nick Hornby (2004). “The Polysyllabic Spree”, McSweeneys Books

49 Copy quote
Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.

Nick Hornby

Long Way Down, Know How, Knows

21 Copy quote
Even bad times have good things in them to make you feel alive.

Nick Hornby

Alive, Bad Times, Good Things

12 Copy quote
It's a mystery of human chemistry and I don't understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home.

Nick Hornby

Home, People, Chemistry

"High Fidelity". www.imdb.com. 2000.

35 Copy quote
It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.

Nick Hornby

Girl, Boys, Adults

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.262, Penguin

6 Copy quote
Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.

Nick Hornby

Book, Important, Trying

23 Copy quote
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.

Nick Hornby

Music, Song, Pain

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.36, Penguin

18 Copy quote
What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?

Nick Hornby

Music, Records, Firsts

34 Copy quote
When you get older, it feels like happy memories and sad memories are pretty much the same thing. It is all just emotion in the end. And any of it can make you weep.

Nick Hornby

Memories, Emotion, Ends

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Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.

Nick Hornby

Hopeful, Way, Sentimental

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.74, Penguin

19 Copy quote
It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.

Nick Hornby

Relationship, Boyfriend, Husband

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.128, Penguin

23 Copy quote
The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.

Nick Hornby

Needs, Dramatic, Being Human

"How does it feel to be a woman? First, the Good News..." by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. May 27, 2001.

19 Copy quote
Because music, like color, or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. The chord, the simplest building block for even the tritest, silliest chart song, is a beautiful, perfect, mysterious thing, and when an ill-read, uneducated, uncultured, emotionally illiterate boor puts a couple of them together, he has every chance of creating something wonderful and powerful. All I ask of music is that is sounds good.

Nick Hornby

Beautiful, Song, Couple

Nick Hornby (2003). “31 songs”, Viking Books

18 Copy quote
I don't even feel as if I'm the center of my own world, so how am I supposed to feel as though I'm the center of anyone else's?

Nick Hornby

World, Feels, My Own

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.299, Penguin

4 Copy quote
For alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.

Nick Hornby

Average, Fever Pitch, Moron

"Fever Pitch". Book by Nick Hornby, 1992.

39 Copy quote
I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.

Nick Hornby

Thinking, Way, Good Person

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Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on Earth tolerable.

Nick Hornby

Sarcasm, Compassion, Two

Nick Hornby (2003). “Songbook”, p.123, Penguin

7 Copy quote
We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute.

Nick Hornby

Lying, Moving, Mean

15 Copy quote
I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign.

Nick Hornby

Plot, Popcorn, Credit

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.34, Penguin

13 Copy quote
I have less time, less tolerance for bullshit, more interest in good taste, more confidence in my own judgement. The culture with which I surround myself is a reflection of my personality and the circumstances of my life, which is in part how it should be.

Nick Hornby

Reflection, Bullshit, Personality

Nick Hornby (2003). “Songbook”, p.22, Penguin

6 Copy quote
We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?

Nick Hornby

Want, Badness

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...self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy.

Nick Hornby

Men, Worst Enemy, Self

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.131, Penguin

7 Copy quote
You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in.

Nick Hornby

Life, Happiness, Knives

16 Copy quote

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Born: April 17, 1957
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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