Nick Hornby Quotes - Page 2

You wouldn't believe that so much could change just because a relationship ended.

Everyone disliked their partners at some time or another, she knew that. But she’d spent her hours in the dark wondering whether she’d ever liked him. Would it really have been so much worse to spend those years alone? Why did there have to be someone else in the room while she was eating, watching TV, sleeping?

You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn't force your way into someone else's, because then it wouldn't be a bubble any more.

A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners.

But I want to see Clara, Charlie's friend, who's right up my street. I want to see her because I don't know where my street is; I don't even know which part of town it's in, which city, which country, so maybe she'll enable me to get my bearings.

He's a sweet man whose crime was that he didn't love me quite enough, and because this wasn't much of a crime I had to make up some bigger ones.

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.

In other words, it's one of those books you thrust on your partner with an incredulous cry of "This is me!

I don't want anyone writing in to point out that I spend too much money on books, many of which I will never read. I know that already. I certainly intend to read all of them, more or less. My intentions are good. Anyway, it's my money. And I'll bet you do it too.

I would like my personal reading map to resemble a map of the British Empire circa 1900.

And what would happen if we never read the classics? There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more fun.

Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time.

We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too.

You're not allowed to say anything about books because they're books, and books are, you know, God.

Vorweg ein paar grundsätzliche Regeln:

1) Ich möchte keine Klagen hören, ich würde zu viel Geld für Bücher ausgeben, die ich dann doch nicht lese. Das weiß ich selbst. Ich habe stets die Absicht, sie mehr oder weniger alle zu lesen. Meine Absichten sind gut. Und schließlich ist es ja mein Geld. Ich wette, bei Ihnen ist es ähnlich.

I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.

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.

It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life, some indication of how deep a hole you had managed to burrow for yourself

I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.

When someone uses the phrase ‘the prick one’, and you know immediately that this is a synonym for the word ‘metaphorically’, you are entitled to wonder whether you know the speaker too well. You are even entitled to wonder whether you should know her at all.