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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

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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
Feels
Critical
Flaw
Kind
Line
Dubious
Emotional
Correctness
Emotion
Represents
Lines
Orthodox
Form
Flaws
Self
Artistic
Feel
Pity
Ignoble

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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.
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I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I’m certainly not the dumbest. I mean, I’ve read books like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Love in the Time of Cholera, and I think I’ve understood them. They’re about girls, right? Just kidding. But I have to say my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash’s autobiography Cash by Johnny C
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I really don't want to be boring, and so many books are so boring!
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That’s why he’s worried about how his life is turning out, and he’s lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all
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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.
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Where's the superficial? I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward. This doesn't seem like superficial to me. These aren't flesh wounds. These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs.
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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.
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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.
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...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.
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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.
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This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.
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The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.
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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.
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Definitely avoid going out with ugly girls who say they want to be models. Not because they're ugly, but because they're mad.
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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.
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I'm still not a very good white wine, but I'm drinkable - you could put me in a punch, anyway.
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What harm has he ever done to you?' 'You know what harm he's done me. He offended me with his terrible taste.
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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.
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And mostly all I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don't like them as much as I do.
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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