Welcome to a collection of insightful and thought-provoking quotes by the acclaimed British author, Nick Hornby. Renowned for his keen observations of human nature and witty narrative style, Hornby has captivated readers worldwide with his novels, essays, and screenplays. His works delve into the complexities of relationships, the struggles of everyday life, and the pursuit of personal passions, often infused with humor and poignancy.
Nick Hornby’s writing resonates with authenticity, portraying characters who grapple with the universal dilemmas of love, ambition, and self-discovery. Whether it’s through the lens of music aficionados in High Fidelity, football fanatics in Fever Pitch, or unlikely friendships in About a Boy, Hornby skillfully crafts narratives that illuminate the human experience with sincerity and depth. His ability to blend humor with introspection has earned him a dedicated following and critical acclaim.
I couldn’t imagine a list of 10 records that didn’t contain a punk record – that didn’t contain a Clash record. Nick Hornby
I didn’t really want to write about music very much in ‘High Fidelity.’ I wanted to write about the relationship stuff, and the music stuff is kind of a bit of fun on top and something to frame it with. Nick Hornby
We need a romantic illusion to embark on relationships in the first place. After that, they survive or fail for other, more practical reasons. Nick Hornby
Radio football is football reduced to its lowest common denominator. Nick Hornby
I wasted the 1980s. I wasted every minute at Cambridge talking to people who knew more about music than I did. Nick Hornby
With ‘Brooklyn,’ I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I just had a very strong sense that if I turned the volume up a little bit, it could be something really special. Nick Hornby
If you’re 22 and got everything you want, what are you going to write about for the rest of your life? Nick Hornby
The Internet’s changed everything. There are no record stores to hang out in anymore. Nick Hornby
I think quite a misguided literary culture has grown up in the 20th century that says a book has to have a seriousness of purpose and a seriousness of language. Nick Hornby
I can’t imagine writing a screenplay where I didn’t feel deeply connected at some kind of visceral level to the material. Nick Hornby
The Oscars are like a political campaign. You have to have the right candidates, and the people in Hollywood know what they are. Nick Hornby
At a crude estimate, I must have played ‘Thunder Road’ 1,500 times. Nick Hornby
I always thought ‘Of Mice and Men’ was such a perfect book because there’s nothing not to understand, but it’s still really clever and moving and complicated, but everybody understands the complication. Nick Hornby
I applied for a job on ‘Melody Maker’ once. Nick Hornby
Home was extremely normal. But my dad’s life was quite exotic, really. When I went away to stay with him, it was a different world. I never wanted to be in that world. I was much happier with my mates at home. Nick Hornby
Youth is a quality not unlike health: it’s found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it. Nick Hornby
I’m a reader for lots of reasons. On the whole, I tend to hang out with readers, and I’m scared they wouldn’t want to hang out with me if I stopped. Nick Hornby
People love Jane Austen, even though those books are absurd to us, because we like the clarity of it: we can see very clearly what Elizabeth Bennett has to overcome, what she has to deal with. Nick Hornby
Football really felt like a private thing when I was in my teens because it wasn’t on television, for a start, apart from ‘Match of the Day.’ Nick Hornby
We don’t feel duty-bound to get all the way through a TV program. If we’re not enjoying it, we turn over. Movies, we tend to give more of the benefit of the doubt because they’re only 90 minutes or two hours. But books, there is this thing of, ‘It’s a book. I’ve got to finish it.’ Nick Hornby
The easiest thing to write was ‘Fever Pitch’ because it was a memoir. Nick Hornby
My relationships are fairly stable. Nick Hornby
I’m quite gloomy. I just am one of those people, vaguely lugubrious. Nick Hornby
I spent as much time watching telly and films when I was a kid as I did lying around reading books. I think it’s crazy that writers are only allowed to say that certain books have influenced them. Nick Hornby
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
Everything’s complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness. Nick Hornby
I would like to have a go at TV. I think, especially when you have kids, that you spend a lot of time watching telly, and you think, ‘How come I’m not doing that?’ Nick Hornby
I think that every book that’s in a bookstore should entertain in some way. Nick Hornby
I can’t stand it when writers moan about what film-makers might do or have done to their books. There’s a very simple answer: don’t take the money. Nick Hornby
You can’t really ask for anything more than to be working for your entire life – and to be doing something that some people respond to. Nick Hornby
Men use music and football to fill up holes in their lives. Nick Hornby
Studying English was useless, completely useless. It took me years to recover from that. Every time I tried to write, it sounded like a bad university essay. Nick Hornby
Typically, booksellers like to put things into neat little categories. Nick Hornby
I used to be a teacher, and I know how difficult it is to strike a balance between focused conversation and an atmosphere which prevents creativity and thought. Nick Hornby
Dylan’s ‘Chronicles’ is easily the best rock n’ roll memoir ever written, as far as I’m concerned. There aren’t many stories in there, but if you want to know where an artist came from and why he thinks the way he does, then that’s the one. Nick Hornby
I think I became less literary after I sold more! Nick Hornby
If you can get every kid to have found a book that he or she loves, then you’ve done a great job. Nick Hornby
Writing is about confidence and wondering what the point of anything is. Nick Hornby
In a way, novel writing is such a permanently student lifestyle. When it comes to movies, and you have to go to these meetings and try and impress people and get money out of them, I feel as though I’m playacting at being somebody who’s grown up. Nick Hornby
My computer is littered with abandoned projects. Nick Hornby
I can remember my father gave me a huge history of football for my 12th birthday – I used to read that a lot. I can remember thinking it was cool that something I was interested in even had a history. Most things I loved didn’t. Nick Hornby
Every time we pick up a book from a sense of duty and we find that we’re struggling to get through it, we reinforce the notion that reading is something we should do, but telly is something that we want to do. Nick Hornby
I’m really not a big rereader – I’m too aware of my own ignorance. Nick Hornby
It’s like when you get sick of your own cooking: I occasionally wish I could write something that didn’t come out sounding like me. All writers must experience that. Nick Hornby
It takes big business a couple of decades to work out how best to exploit a cultural form; once that has happened, ‘that high-low fork in the road’ is unavoidable, and the middle way begins to look impossibly daunting. Nick Hornby
I think firmly that art is no use to anyone unless it offers some kind of consolation or hope. Nick Hornby
I used to go and see the Clash a fair bit. I did think they were dead cool, and very handsome. Nick Hornby
If you’re reading a novel that was written in 1964, you’ll find out more about 1964 than if you’re reading a nonfiction book written in 1964 because you’re hearing how language was actually used and hearing what people’s actual concerns were at the beginning of the 1960s. Nick Hornby
One of the depressing things one realizes as one gets older is how much of one’s tastes and attitudes are simply products of economic circumstance at the time. Nick Hornby
‘An Education’ was a complicated piece of work because it came from a tiny essay, so it took me a while to find the story I wanted to tell and the characters I wanted to tell it about. That really only emerged after four or five drafts. Nick Hornby
Words don’t come very easily to me. Which, given my profession, is a worrying impediment. Nick Hornby
It takes me two to three years to write a novel. A screenplay is 100 pages and takes five years. Nick Hornby
The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score. Nick Hornby
Screenwriting is about condensing. Nick Hornby
I have boys, and boys are particularly resistant to reading books. I had some success recently with Sherman Alexie’s great young adult novel ‘The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian.’ I told my son it was highly inappropriate for him and one of the most banned books in America. That got his attention, and he raced through it. Nick Hornby
With movies, it always feels like such a long shot getting it made. Nick Hornby
I hated teaching Shakespeare. In order for the students to understand what was going on, you had to tell them the story of ‘Macbeth’ or whatever. Shakespeare is about character and language, and they didn’t get any of that. Nick Hornby
I always naturally want to change things up if I possibly can. I never want to write a sequel to a book. I don’t want to go back over things. I don’t want to adapt my own books for the screen. That’s something that’s important to me, the keeping it fresh. Nick Hornby
I think the things that are most intimate are nameless and shapeless. Nick Hornby
I have the same interests as women. Well, apart from football and music, obviously. I’ve always had as many female friends as male ones. The novels I read as a young man were all by women writers, and when I started writing, I wanted to set my books inside the home. Nick Hornby
I think it’s weird when you become rich at 40. Nick Hornby
When you’re adapting a novel, there are always scenes taken out of the book, and no matter which scenes they are, it’s always someone’s favorite. As a screenwriter, you realize, ‘Well, it doesn’t work if you include everyone’s favorite scenes.’ Nick Hornby
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
Lots of times when I’m offered things, I can’t see how a story gets filmed. Either it’s too internal or it doesn’t have a strong spine. Nick Hornby
I’ve never met anyone who is seriously bad. Nick Hornby
If it’s not gripping you, you are reading the wrong book. Nick Hornby
A lot of what ‘Funny Girl’ is about, for me, is the experience feeling very happy doing a certain thing with a certain group of people. That partly came about because of having really positive experiences writing movies. Nick Hornby
The writing in those HBO dramas, like ‘The Wire,’ is as good as anything I’ve seen. Nick Hornby
The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can’t, it might not be your inadequacy that’s to blame. ‘Good’ books can be pretty awful sometimes. Nick Hornby
It’s a great relief that you’re not as bad a parent as you thought you were. Nick Hornby
Whether I am writing about a man or woman makes no difference in terms of difficulty. Nick Hornby
When you see the poet laureate saying that every child should have read ‘Ulysses’ and that you’re just giving up on children if you think it’s elitist – does that include children with special needs or whose first language isn’t English? Nick Hornby
There were authors I read as an adult who completely inspired me. But when I was a teenager, I got to hang out with Tom Stoppard for a bit. My mum was his wife’s secretary. He was obviously super smart, but he was also approachable and normal. I think he was the first person I’d ever met who I’d thought, ‘Oh, I see. There’s a living in this.’ Nick Hornby
Sometimes when people are attached to a project, they need persuading to stay attached, and then, in retrospect, they’re not the right person. Nick Hornby
The most important thing for me is realism. I don’t like writing which does somersaults on the page, and I’m no great fan of the hard work literary novel. Nick Hornby
All the Oscars stuff for ‘An Education’ was incredibly exciting, especially because it was such an underdog project – no one would give us the money for it, and we all nearly gave up because it wasn’t getting anywhere, then suddenly a breakthrough and this really lovely film, which then took on a life of its own. Nick Hornby
However varied you try to make your work, you still bump up against the end of you. You keep knocking into a wall, and the wall is your own skull. But when you adapt somebody’s work, it’s like a door into somewhere else. It feels like a holiday from myself. Nick Hornby
When most people come in from work, 95 percent of them reach for the remote control. Then they read before they go to sleep, to get off to sleep. They do that because reading feels like a duty, and TV feels like fun. Nick Hornby
I think it does everybody a lot of good to have a period of no success. Nick Hornby
I love the detail about the workings of the human heart and mind that only fiction can provide – film can’t get in close enough. Nick Hornby
There’s music every day. I don’t think I could write without it. Not that I listen while I’m writing. It’s more hearing a piece of music that I want to somehow convert into prose, as a creative inspiration. Nick Hornby
The best bit of novel writing is being allowed to write exactly what you want at the speed that you want, and to include as many different people and places and times as you want, working with pretty much only one person, the editor, whose job it is to get it in good shape for publication. Nick Hornby
The more screenwriting you do, the more you become aware that particular scenes aren’t going to end up in the movie because they’re too expensive. That has perhaps changed the way I think about writing novels, actually, because now I write expensive scenes whenever I can. Nick Hornby
The whole point of reading is that the writer is speaking to you, and if you’re not listening, you’re not going to have any fun reading. Nick Hornby
Why are we scared of a ’50s weepie? Why are we scared of a movie that pulls you in and punches you in the stomach? Nick Hornby
If adults are not enjoying something they’re doing in their leisure time, they should stop doing it. Nick Hornby
I think I am naturally depressive. Nick Hornby
It seems to me quite often that the journeys of young women are more moving because they are hemmed in more, and dramatically it’s more interesting to think about and write about people whose lives are circumscribed in some way. Nick Hornby
I only want to write books and movies about women. Nick Hornby
I only read the very best music books. Donald Fagan’s memoir ‘Eminent Hipsters’ is great. Bob Dylan’s memoir ‘Chronicles’ and Patty Smith’s ‘Just Kids’ are both incredible. Nick Hornby
I miss independent record stores very much. Nick Hornby
I think the moment you’re writing about somebody who’s not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal. Nick Hornby
I’d say I got into Marvin Gaye properly in college. Nick Hornby
I don’t want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them! Nick Hornby
I like writing about popular culture. It helps to place people. I think you can be really, really accurate if you know enough about it, and place people precisely. Nick Hornby
When someone says they’ve read your book 15 times, you think, ‘Well, you should read something else.’ Nick Hornby
I think, always, with a new book, I get nervous. I think mostly it is because work is really important to me, and a book doing well is important because it buys you another one. Not because of the money but if you keep doing interesting work, work that people like, they will want you to do more, and offers that are interesting come in. Nick Hornby
I’ve always been able to enjoy aspects of my life. Nick Hornby
I do not wish to produce prose that draws attention to itself, rather than the world it describes. Nick Hornby
Once you create this thing between duty and reading, it’s over. Reading’s over. Nick Hornby
