Nick Hornby Quotes - Page 9

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We get together with people because they're the same or because they're different, and in the end we split with them for exactly the same reasons.

Nick Hornby

People, Together, Different

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…I've had a bad week." What's happened?" Nothing's happened. I've had a bad week in my head, is all.

Nick Hornby

Week, Happened

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.141, Penguin

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The chief attraction of the opposite sex for all of us, old and young, men and women: we need someone to save us from the sympathetic smiles in the Sunday-night cinema queue, someone who can stop us from falling down into the pit where the permanently single live with their mums and dads.

Nick Hornby

Sex, Dad, Fall

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.152, Penguin

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He would read up on parenting, if he thought it would help, but his errors always seemed too basic for the manuals. "Always tell your kids they have siblings..." He couldn't imagine any child-raising guru taking the trouble to write that down. Maybe there was a gap in the market.

Nick Hornby

Children, Sibling, Kids

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I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.

Nick Hornby

Past, Very Good, I Can

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.95, Penguin

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Love and charity share the same root word (caritas). How is that possible, when everything in our recent history suggest they cannot coexist, that they are antiethical, that if you put the two of them together in a sack they would bite and scratch and scream, until one of them is torn apart?

Nick Hornby

Two, Roots, Together

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When even the scrupulously detached BBC is exhorting us to talk to God, you know something is going on.

Nick Hornby

Knows, Detached

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It's no good looking to writers for definitions of what constitutes proper writing, because you will drive yourself crazy, and you won't find anything that you can build into a coherent whole.

Nick Hornby

Crazy, Writing, Definitions

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Radio football is football reduced to its lowest common denominator.

Nick Hornby

Football, Radio, Common

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Linda seemed to recognize loneliness. Possibly she could see it sitting opposite her, sipping lager and trying not to lose its temper. It was an illness, loneliness-it made you weak, gullible, feebleminded.

Nick Hornby

Loneliness, Opposites, Trying

Nick Hornby (2009). “Juliet, Naked”, p.157, Penguin UK

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I'd thought I'd live with my wife, but I couldn't find one.

Nick Hornby

Wife, My Wife

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Phone calls like ours only happen when you've spent several years hurting and being hurt, until every work you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play.

Nick Hornby

Hurt, Phones, Years

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What good were real feelings anyway?

Nick Hornby

Real, Feelings, Real Feelings

Nick Hornby (1999). “About a Boy”, p.127, Penguin

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We were little animals, which is not to imply that by the end of the week we were tearing our tank tops off; just that, metaphorically speaking, we had begun to sniff each other's bottoms, and we did not find the odor entirely repellent.

Nick Hornby

Animal, Tanks, Odor

Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.18, Penguin

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...You can find people. It's like those acrobatic displays.... Those ones when you stand on top of loads of people in a pyramid. It doesn't really matter who they are, as long as they're there and you don't let them go away without finding someone else.

Nick Hornby

Pyramids, Long, People

Nick Hornby (1999). “About a Boy”, p.226, Penguin

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When it came down to it, he just wasn't that engaged. You had to be engaged to be a vegetarian; you had to be engaged to sing "Both Sides Now" with your eyes closed; when it came down to it, you had to be engaged to be a mother.

Nick Hornby

Mother, Eye, Sides

Nick Hornby (1999). “About a Boy”, p.86, Penguin

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No time spent with a book is ever entirely wasted, even if the experience is not a happy one: there’s always something to be learned. It’s just that, every now and again, you can hit a patch of reading that makes you feel as if you’re pootling about. [...] But what can you do about it? We don’t choose to waste our reading time; it just happens. The books let us down.

Nick Hornby

Book, Reading, Waste

"Stuff I've been reading". www.believermag.com. July/August 2011.

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Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.

Nick Hornby

Football, Kings, Missing

Nick Hornby (2005). “Fever Pitch”, p.109, Penguin UK

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I'm not telling you that suicidal people aren't so far away from people who can get by; I'm telling you that people who can get by aren't so far away from being suicidal.

Nick Hornby

Suicidal, People, Far Away

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It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already.

Nick Hornby

Reading, Opportunity, Air

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Sometimes it's moments like that, real complicated moments, absorbing moments, that make you realize that even hard times have things in them that make you feel alive. And then there's music, and girls, and drugs, and homeless people who've read Pauline Kael, and wah-wah pedals, and English potato chip flavors, and I haven't even read Martin Chuzzlewit yet... There's plenty out there.

Nick Hornby

Girl, Real, Hard Times

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

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But I suspect that all writers come up with premises of some kind, fragments of narrative or scenarios, in the course of a working week.

Nick Hornby

Narrative, Kind, Week

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He's at the chocolate teapot end of the competency scale.

Nick Hornby

Chocolate, Ends, Scales

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

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Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways.

Nick Hornby

Book, Ideas, Clubs

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When you're unhappy, I guess everything in the world - reading, eating, sleeping - has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier.

Nick Hornby

Reading, Sleep, Unhappy

Nick Hornby (2005). “A Long Way Down”, p.137, Penguin UK

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

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