Nick Hornby

“It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can’t afford to sort out your love...”

“A while back, when Dick & Barry & I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you *are* like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for potential partners, a 2 or 3 pag...”

“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...”

“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, whic...”

“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.”

“I hate time. It never does what you want it to.”

“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...”

“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....”

“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 book...”

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

“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...”

“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 Abs...”

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

“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.”

“We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?”