|
094b98a
|
he was disappointed that he'd never quite added up to as much as the results of his own calculations. The trouble was that he'd got his sums all wrong, but she didn't want to be the one to tell him that.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
c97174b
|
What was happening here? He decided that children were what was happening here; that children served as a symbolic blemish, like a birthmark or obesity, which gave him a chance where previously there would have been none. Maybe children beautiful single women.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
5911c3f
|
So the whole conversation is going right off course. It's like a supermarket trolley with a wonky wheel, because all the time I'm thinking, this should be easy to push along, and everything I say just takes me in the wrong direction.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
7fc9d93
|
Malk'lm zam'lcha. Ani znaeshe, che terapevtite izpolzvat takava tekhnika - ako m'lchat dostat'chno d'lgo, nakraia obekt't na terapiiata shche izkreshchi: "Spakh s bashcha mi!", i vsichki shche se razotidat dovolni."
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
7c20097
|
She didn't think she'd ever shown enough gratitude for the quick wits of the people she worked with, and if the evening ever ended, which it showed no signs of doing, she would rectify that. She would buy them all flowers or whisky and write a card thanking them for being so clever.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
d1a5826
|
In other words, it is impossible: we cannot function properly, and the evening ends in confusion and awkwardness, and very early.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
51ffc82
|
So there we have it. I get up in the morning determined to do something approximating to the right thing, and with in two hours find something to feel guilty about.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
efadb14
|
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, in the hope that you might be lucky, and the knife has actually been staunching the blood. You want to know the conventional medical wisdom? The conventional medical wisdom is that you keep the knife in. Really.
|
|
science
life
wisdom
survival
|
Nick Hornby (Author) |
|
fb880a2
|
Influential books are often a disappointment, if they're properly influential, because influence cannot guarantee the quality of the imitators, and your appetite for the original has been partially sated by its poor copies.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
2aad479
|
Effectively we become the DVD of Elf that you ignore at nine o'clock on a Friday night, on the presumption there will be something better (at least, something more fulfilling, more complex, and that you haven't seen twice before) on the shelves somewhere. And guess what you end up going home with? Well, that's what we are to these beautiful, fantastic women: Elves.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
832d1e1
|
So this is supposed to be the how, and when, and why, and what or reading - about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time. "We talked abo..
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
e1d8c1c
|
Ponekad kondomi stvarno ali stvarno sprecavaju zacece. Ukoliko ste lik koji ih uvek nosi sa sobom onda niko nece hteti sa vama da spava.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
75f234b
|
And if I went back to sleep and slept for forty years and woke up without any teeth to the sound of Melody Radio in an old people's home, I wouldn't worry that much, because the worst of life, i.e., the rest of it, would be over. And I wouldn't even have had to kill myself.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
baae290
|
I can't tell you how good and bad I felt. Yes I can: I felt like a baked Alaska.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
2994523
|
They already knew that they would be telling people about the morning for a long time to come, maybe for the rest of their lives, and the taxi ride was the first attempt at a first draft of a story that would have to satisfy parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
46dfb46
|
The difference between sex with David and sex with Stephen is like the difference between science and art. With Stephen it's all empathy and imagination and exploration and the shock of the new, and the outcome is... uncertain, if you know what I mean. I'm engaged by it, but I', mot necessarily sure what its all about. David, on the other hand, presses this button, then that one, and bingo! It's like operating a lift - just as romantic, but..
|
|
sex
|
Nick Hornby |
|
579448d
|
One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
31473bd
|
Marcus was difficult simply because he frequently gave the impression that he was merely stopping off on this planet on his way to somewhere else, somewhere he might fit in better.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
66e5acd
|
He was hoping that when this was all over, his spiritual overdraft would have been paid off, and he'd be allowed to use the cash machine again.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
df9fa91
|
You just...you just don't do anything. You get lost in your head, and you sit around thinking instead of getting on with something, and most of the time you think rubbish. You always seem to miss what's really happening. Do you know that expression, 'Time on his hands and himself on his mind'? That's you. So what should I be doing? I don't know. Something. Working. Seeing people. Running a scout troop, or running a club even. Something mor..
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
073541a
|
But somehow, there's less time to think since she came back. We're too busy talking, or working, or having sex (there's a lot of sex at the moment, much of it initiated by me as a way of banishing insecurity), or eating, or going to the pictures. Maybe I should stop doing these things, so as I can work it all out properly, because I know these things are important times. But then again, maybe I shouldn't; maybe this is how it's done. Maybe ..
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
3128f0e
|
Needless to say, drink, drugs, food, and sex played no part in the festivities. But who needs any of that when you've got literature?
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
4710eff
|
See, I've always been afraid of marriage because of, you know, ball and chain, I want my freedom, all that. But when I was thinking about that stupid girl I suddenly saw it was the opposite: that if you got married to someone you know you love, and you sort yourself out, it frees you up for other things.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
582b281
|
Maybe if I separate the coincidences out, push them further apart, you might believe them more. One the other hand, I don't care whether you believe them, because they're true. And in any case, I still can't decide whether they are coincidences or not, these things: Perhaps getting something you want is never a coincidence. If you want a cheese sandwich and you get a cheese sandwich, that can't be a coincidence, can it? And by the same toke..
|
|
power-over-your-life
coincidences
sandwich
|
Nick Hornby |
|
6d80a30
|
Clive was rapidly coming to the conclusion that being engaged to somebody meant that he spent an awful lot of time not doing things he wanted to do.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
4b725b4
|
some things were better, some were worse, and the only way one can ever learn to understand one's own youth is by accepting both halves of the proposition.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
9327ab2
|
It's music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows you're being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you're carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
8bb1c9e
|
I recently discovered that a friend who was re-reading Bleak House had done no other Dickens apart from Barnaby Ridge. That's just weird. I shamed and nagged him into picking up Great Expectations instead. But when I tried to recall anything about it other than its excellence, I failed. Maybe there was something about a peculiar stepfather? Or was that This Boy's Life? And I realized that, as this is true of just about every book I consumed..
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
23cb883
|
Is it possible to want to divorce a man simply because he doesn't want to be rude about Ginger Spice? I rather fear it might be.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
b23854d
|
Sometimes it seems as though the only way a man can judge his own niceness, his own decency, is by looking at his relationships with women, or rather, with prospective or current sexual partners. It's easy enough to be nice to your mates. You can buy them a drink, make them a tape, ring them up to see if they're OK ... there are any number of quick and painless methods of turning yourself into a Good Bloke. When it comes to girlfriends, tho..
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
1b47cf4
|
that night taught me one of life's most useful lessons, one of the only pieces of advice I have to offer to younger generations: YOU'RE ALLOWED TO WALK OUT!
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
b030033
|
I've never been happy in the way that I've been happy in this room, and in the studios," said Sophie. "I've never laughed so much, or learned so much, and everything I know about my job is because of the people here. Even you, Clive. And I'm worried that I'll spend the rest of my working life looking for an experience like this one, where everything clicks and everyone pushes you to do the best you can, better than anything you think you're..
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
22e04c0
|
So, as she walked down the stairs into the club, she was looking forward to a seething, teeming, wriggling, wiggling throng of dancers, many of whom she'd recognize: she wanted to see former pupils, local shopkeepers, museum regulars, all of whom would look at her as if to say, "Here we are! What kept you?" --
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
ac8f4ae
|
What came first the music or the misery?People worry about kids playing with guns,or watching violent videos,that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about the kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak,rejection,pain,misery and loss.Did i listen to pop music because i was miserable?Or was i miserable because i listened to pop music?
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
568b791
|
It's often the way that people who take their work seriously laugh at stupid jokes; it's as if they are under-humored and, as a consequence, suffer from premature laugh-ejaculation.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
d8a30bf
|
from his random observations after reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens) In the Old Curiosity Shop I discovered that in the character of Dick Swiveller, Dickens provided P.G. Wodehouse with pretty much the whole of his oeuvre. In David Copperfield, David's bosses Spenlow and Jorkins are what must be the earliest fictional representations of good cop/bad cop.
|
|
literature
|
Nick Hornby |
|
84aed34
|
Seeing as he wasn't very bright, I was pretty sure that he was going to be good at fighting.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
e5a8cf9
|
Musicians had been assholes since the day the lute was invented.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
02a3f5c
|
Will suddenly remembered that a boy at his old school had had a mum like Fiona - not exactly like her, because it seemed to Will that Fiona was a peculiarly contemporary creation, with her seventies albums, her eighties politics and her nineties foot lotion, but certainly a sixties equivalent of Fiona. Stephen Fullick's mother had a thing about TV, that it turned people into androids, so they didn't have a set in the house. 'Did you see Thu..
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
7340650
|
He was distraught, of course: he was just the kind of idiot who could only understand what things meant by doing them first.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
55b188a
|
But Tony was a storyteller, and he knew that if you looked at any narrative closely enough you could trace the unraveling back and back and back--right to the very beginning, if the story was good enough.
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |
|
25bc8eb
|
W]hen's it all going to f***ing stop? I'm going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of my life until there aren't any rocks left? I'm going to run each time I get itchy feet? Because I get them about once a quarter, along with the utilities bills. More than that, even... I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have s*** for brains..
|
|
nick-hornby
real-love
|
Nick Hornby |
|
03be2be
|
Of course Tucker Crowe was in pain when he made [the record], but he couldn't just march into a recording studio and start howling. He'd have sounded mad and pathetic. He had to calm the rage, tame it and shape it so that it could be contained in the tight-fitting songs. Then he had to dress it up so that it sounded more like itself.
|
|
music
songwriting
creativity
|
Nick Hornby |
|
d367c7f
|
It was almost as if he had been given a glimpse of what it was like to be human. It wasn't too bad, really; he wouldn't even mind being human on full-time basis
|
|
|
Nick Hornby |