Quote

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

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
Things
Facts
Life
Tell
People
Wells
Presume
Well
Simplest
Feel
Sorry
Feels
Asking
Even
Aren
Going
Fact

More quotes by 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
Even bad times have good things in them to make you feel alive.
Nick Hornby
Image
I have always been accused of taking the things I love - football, of course, but also books and records - much too seriously, and I do feel a kind of anger when I hear a bad record, or when someone is lukewarm about a book that means a lot to me.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
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
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
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
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
Image
We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in.
Nick Hornby
Image
Radio football is football reduced to its lowest common denominator. Shorn of the game's aesthetic pleasures, or the comfort of a crowd that feels the same way as you, or the sense of security that you get when you see that your defenders and goalkeeper are more or less where they should be, all that is left is naked fear.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
You have to work at relationships. You can’t just walk out on them every time something goes wrong.
Nick Hornby
Image
The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
To me, making a tape is like writing a letter – there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one.
Nick Hornby
Image
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
Image
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