Nick Hornby Quotes - Page 8

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Age Art Books Children Emotions Failing Feelings

...I feel as though I made a face and the wind changed, and now I have to go through life grimacing in this horrible way.

Nick Hornby

Wind, Way, Faces

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.37, Penguin

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The non-fiction bestseller lists frequently prove that we all want to know more about everything, even if we didn't know that we wanted to know - we're just waiting for the right person to come along and tell us about it.

Nick Hornby

Waiting, Lists, Fiction

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A middle-aged woman who looked like someone's cleaning lady, a shrieking adolescent lunatic and a talkshow host with an orange face... It didn't add up. Suicide wasn't invented for people like this. It was invented for people like Virginia Woolf and Nick Drake. And Me. Suicide was supposed to be cool.

Nick Hornby

Suicide, Virginia, Orange

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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.

Nick Hornby

Sorry, People, Asking

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I used to believe, although I don't now, that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at given moments. These moments come along fairly infrequently -during crises in relationships, for example, or when one has been given the chance to start afresh somewhere- and one can ignore them or seize them.

Nick Hornby

Growing Up, Believe, Adults

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Tuesday night I reorganized my record collection. I often do this at periods of emotional stress. There are some people who would find this a pretty dull way to spend an evening, but I'm not one of them. This is my life, and it's nice to be able to wade in it, immerse your arms in it, touch it.

Nick Hornby

Nice, Stress, Night

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.65, Penguin

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Anyway, who lives a rich and beautiful life that I know? It's no longer possible, surely, for anyone who works for a living, or lives in a city, or shops in a supermarket, or watches TV, or reads a newspaper, or drives a car, or eats frozen pizzas. A nice life, possibly, with a huge slice of luck and a little spare cash. And maybe even a good life if... Well, let's not go into all that. But rich and beautiful lives seem to be a discontinued line.

Nick Hornby

Beautiful, Good Life, Nice

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Most people get suicide, I guess; most people, even if it's hidden deep down inside somewhere, can remember a time in their lives when they thought about whether they really wanted to wake up the next day. Wanting to die seems like it might be a part of being alive.

Nick Hornby

Suicide, Suicidal, Next Day

"A Long Way Down". Book by Nick Hornby, June 7, 2005.

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As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of the people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive.

Nick Hornby

Football, People, Attractive

Nick Hornby (2005). “Fever Pitch”, p.173, Penguin UK

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There's no doubt that he's the biggest sports star in the world now.
(on David Beckham)

Nick Hornby

Sports, Stars, Doubt

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I had forgotten that Jess felt about long words the way that racists feel about black people: She hated them, and wanted to send them back from where they came from.

Nick Hornby

Long, People, Black

"A Long Way Down". Book by Nick Hornby, May 7, 2005.

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There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.

Nick Hornby

Life, Littles, Used

Nick Hornby (1999). “About a Boy”, p.24, Penguin

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I'm coming to London next week, by the way, in unhappy circumstances. Are we getting on fine as we are? Or would you like a drink?

Nick Hornby

Next Week, Unhappy, London

Nick Hornby (2009). “Juliet, Naked”, p.134, Penguin UK

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(About Love)The most important thing in life, and you can't tell whether people have it or not. Surely this is wrong? Surely people who are happy should look happy, at all times, no matter how much money they have or how uncomfortable their shoes are or how little their child is sleeping; and people who are doing OK but have still not found their soul-mate should look, I don't know, anxious, like Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally; and people who are desperate should wear something, a yellow ribbon maybe, which would allow them to be identified by similar desperate people.

Nick Hornby

Children, Sleep, Things In Life

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You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then?

Nick Hornby

Believe, Character, People

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.85, Penguin

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So now what? What happens when words fail us?

Nick Hornby

Failing, Happens

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That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

Nick Hornby

Mother, Cereal, Laughing

Nick Hornby (1999). “About a Boy”, p.66, Penguin

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On New Year's Eve he ould make a resolution to recover some his previous scepticism, but until then he would do as the Romans do, and smile at people even if he disapproved of them

Nick Hornby

New Year, Years, People

Nick Hornby (1999). “About a Boy”, p.140, Penguin

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I see now that dismissing YA books because you're not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you're not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I've discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that's filled with masterpieces I've never heard of.

Nick Hornby

Book, Adults, Criminals

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

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Did you know that Jacques Benveniste, one of the world's leading homeopathic 'scientists', now claims that you can email homeopathic remedies? Yeah, see, what you do is you can take the 'memory' of the diluted substance out of the water electromagnetically, put it on your computer, email it, and play it back on a sound card into new water. I mean, that could work, right?

Nick Hornby

Memories, Mean, Play

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

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The kind of love my mum talks about is full of worry and work and forgiving people and putting up with things and stuff like that. It's not a lot of fun, that's for sure. If that really is love, the kind my mum talks about, then nobody can ever know if they love somebody, can they? It seems like what she's saying is, if you're pretty sure you love somebody, the way I was sure in those few weeks, then you can't love them, because that isn't what love is. Trying to understand what she means by love would do your head in.

Nick Hornby

Love, Fun, Mean

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By the early seventies I had become an Englishman - that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do.

Nick Hornby

Half, England, Hated

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

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Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.

Nick Hornby

Emotional, Self, Dubious

Nick Hornby (2003). “Songbook”, p.49, Penguin

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Surely we all occasionally buy books because of a daydream we're having - a little fantasy about the people we might turn into one day, when our lives are different, quieter, more introspective, and when all the urgent reading, whatever that might be, has been done. We never arrive at that point, needless to say.

Nick Hornby

Book, Reading, People

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.27, McSweeney's

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Every time people force themselves to carry on with a book they're not enjoying, they reinforce the idea that reading is a duty.

Nick Hornby

Reading, Book, Ideas

"This much I know". Interview with Simon Garfield, www.theguardian.com. April 19, 2008.

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

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