Nick Hornby Quotes

I had the best of both worlds when I was a kid. I'd spend a quiet week with my mum, then I'd go to my dad's property in the Adelaide Hills, where there were all these kids and animals running around.

I remember I always felt much more safe standing up on a chair and singing in front of my mother than I was in front of my father!

Things began to improve when I went to Rangoon. To begin with, my father was promoted, which meant he was at home more. The matriarchal society was ended, and for the first time, I went to a boys' school.

I'm the youngest of four. I have two older sisters and an older brother and was raised by a single mother. Basically, my household was just full of life. Everything was lit all the time.

She was just Ma, and I didn't grow up in some kind of acting dynasty: Orson Welles didn't come round and give me a piggyback; Vivien Leigh never read me a bedtime story. It was just my mum and our housekeeper, whom I adored, and after that, it was boarding school.

I have been brought up in an environment which was quite an exciting childhood.

I grew up as the youngest child in a big, noisy family, and there was always someone around to hang out with.

I wasn't necessarily aware of what my dad did, but I was aware that wherever we'd go, there would be attention. I was never comfortable with it.

So many people are in comedy because of difficult mothers or broken homes.

Between the two [parents], it was a really unique upbringing, I think, especially for where I was from.

The figure of my father looms large in my imagination.

I grew up in a normal family. I have sweet parents, who are still married... But my life is so different from how I thought it would be.

I can't think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads.

I was the oldest child, and both my parents worked, so I had a great deal of responsibility from a very young age.

I learned as a really young kid, when my dad was telling me one story and my mom was telling me another that, even as a 5-year-old boy, there was no way that both of these stories are true. Something in the middle is true, and I have to figure out what it is, what the truth is, and I never did quite figure that out.

Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we'd had.

There's no way to repay a mother's love, or lack of it.

Ever wonder why people are so determined to reach for white picket fences, supposed normalcy, a nuclear family? Well, try growing up without one.

I grew up knowing that I had the prettiest mother of anyone in my class.

I study once in a while. But my parents never pushed us into anything. Until we were 18, my mother would make us go with her to Kingdom Hall, and when we turned of age, she let us choose what we wanted to.

I have two young boys, and my wife is at home. Most of the time, I will cook the food, and we'll eat together.

I didn't have a blueprint from my childhood that I could call on, which is an enormous deficit when you're trying to put together a family life. I didn't see a family life where men were thriving inside of it. You know, my dad tended to blame the family for his inability to achieve what he wanted to achieve, you know? So, unfortunately, I was coming from that particular frame of mind.

I have a big family and no one ever treated me like a child. They always treated me like an adult, like an equal.

when we are young our parents run our life; when we get older, our children do.

I have great parents, and they both taught me great things, but my formative years were boundaryless.