Nick Hornby Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

Age Art Books Children Emotions Failing Feelings

Just because it's a relationship, and it's based on soppy stuff, it doesn't mean you can't make intellectual decisions about it. Sometimes you just have to, otherwise you'll never get anywhere. That's where I've been going wrong. I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself.

Nick Hornby

Mean, Weather, Decision

7 Copy quote
You're not allowed to say anything about books because they're books, and books are, you know, God.

Nick Hornby

Book, Say Anything, Knowing God

"A Long Way Down (Movie Tie-In)". Book by Nick Hornby, June 7, 2005.

4 Copy quote
Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of a football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.

Nick Hornby

Football, Disappointment, Fans

Nick Hornby (2005). “Fever Pitch”, p.14, Penguin UK

7 Copy quote
An official statement from Liverpool raised the spectre of a future where 'a club's rival can bring about a significant ban for a top player without anything beyond an accusation'. But on hearing this, many Manchester United fans would have been asking for a definition of the word 'rival'.

Nick Hornby

Player, Rivals, Clubs

7 Copy quote
Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and then telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it, and see what happens.

Nick Hornby

Water, Trying, Want

7 Copy quote
I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically.

Nick Hornby

Sports, School, Europe

7 Copy quote
You can wait forever for the muse to sit on your shoulder, but most of the time you know what has to be done and inspiration is not going to help you.

Nick Hornby

Inspiration, Waiting, Forever

4 Copy quote
That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself.

Nick Hornby

Book, Heart, Optimism

7 Copy quote
Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini.

Nick Hornby

Christmas, Real, Reading

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

9 Copy quote
Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that Dickens is estimated to have invented thirteen thousand characters? Thirteen thousand! The population of a small town!)

Nick Hornby

Writing, Character, Class

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

4 Copy quote
I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.

Nick Hornby

Eye, Blood, Water

4 Copy quote
It was hopeless, life, really. It was set up all wrong.

Nick Hornby

Hopeless

4 Copy quote
Loving people, and allowing yourself to be loved, was only worth the risk if the odds were in your favor, but they quite clearly weren't. There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them. So how smart did you have to be to work out that it just wasn't worth the risk?

Nick Hornby

Smart, Odds, People

4 Copy quote
That’s why; he’s worried about how his life is turning out, and he’s lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all

Nick Hornby

Lonely, People, Life Is

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.162, Penguin

4 Copy quote
It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

Nick Hornby

Song, Talent, Made

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.143, Penguin

4 Copy quote
I may not know the weight of those things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it to myself. You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it's why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible.

Nick Hornby

Sorry, Thinking, People

5 Copy quote
Reading begets reading.

Nick Hornby

Reading, Begets

Nick Hornby (2008). “Shakespeare Wrote for Money”, McSweeneys Books

4 Copy quote
For the best part of 40 years she had genuinely believed that not doing things would somehow prevent regret, when, of course, the exact opposite was true.

Nick Hornby

Regret, Years, Opposites

4 Copy quote
I don't think you can call it stalking when it's just phone calls and letters and emails and knocking on the door.

Nick Hornby

Thinking, Phones, Doors

5 Copy quote
One day, maybe not in the next few weeks, but certainly in the conceivable future, someone will be able to refer to me without using the word 'arse' somewhere in the sentence.

Nick Hornby

One Day, Arses, Able

4 Copy quote
I guess I should have forgotten about it ages ago, but forgetting isn't something I'm very good at.

Nick Hornby

Should Have, Age, Forget

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.178, Penguin

4 Copy quote
If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.

Nick Hornby

Should Have, Wanted, Mess

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.15, Penguin

4 Copy quote
Several months later, and I have finally read one of the three (books), even though I wanted to read all three of them immediately. What happened in between? Other books, is what happened. Other books, other moods, other obligations, other appetites, other reading journeys.

Nick Hornby

Book, Reading, Journey

Nick Hornby (2012). “More Baths Less Talking: Notes from the Reading Life of a Celebrated Author Locked in Battle with Football, Family, and Time Itself”, p.82, McSweeney's

4 Copy quote
What went wrong? Nothing and everything.

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.144, Penguin

4 Copy quote
Asking the head I have now to explain its own thinking is as pointless as dialing your own telephone number on your own telephone: Either way, you get an engaged signal. Or your own answer message, if you have that kind of phone system.

Nick Hornby

Thinking, Phones, Numbers

4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Ben Folds

Nick Hornby

Follow

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

Popular Topics