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contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century.

Nick Hornby

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Nick Hornby
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: April 17
Essayist
Film Producer
Lyricist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
Nicholas Peter John Hornby
Lasts
Accessibility
Last
Proxy
Half
Contemporary
War
Intelligence
Place
Poetry
Kind
Cold
Century
Fighting

More quotes by Nick Hornby

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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
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I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.
Nick Hornby
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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
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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
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So now what? What happens when words fail us?
Nick Hornby
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...So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.
Nick Hornby
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Why does reading freak people out so much? Sure, I could be pretty anti-social when we were on the road, but if I was playing a Gameboy hour after hour, no one would be on my case. In my social circle, blowing up space monsters is socially acceptable in a way that American Pastoral isn't.
Nick Hornby
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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
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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
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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
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In other words, it's one of those books you thrust on your partner with an incredulous cry of This is me!
Nick Hornby
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It takes a child to say the unsayable.
Nick Hornby
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You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, 'Oh yes, I remember how that feels.' But you can't.
Nick Hornby
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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
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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
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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
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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
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We're here for such a short amount of time. Why do we spend any of it building sandcastles?
Nick Hornby
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Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as mere consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.
Nick Hornby
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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