Quote

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

Nick Hornby

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Nick Hornby
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: April 17
Essayist
Film Producer
Lyricist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
Nicholas Peter John Hornby
Present
Understand
Past
Good

More quotes by Nick Hornby

Image
I miss him like one might miss a scar, or wooden leg, something disfiguring but characteristic.
Nick Hornby
Image
You're not allowed to say anything about books because they're books, and books are, you know, God.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
...self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy.
Nick Hornby
Image
When your sad--like really sad--you only want to be with other people who are sad.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
I couldn’t bear to think about the proper future, so I just tried to make things better for the next twenty minutes or so, over and over again.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
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
Image
And we'd had this stupid scene on the street, and even that was kind of cool, because 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.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey.
Nick Hornby
Image
So it's not about what you do. It can't be, can it? It has to be about how you are, how you love, how you treat yourself and those around you, and that's where I get eaten up.
Nick Hornby
Image
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