Nick Hornby Quotes

They read their sports pages, know their statistics and either root like hell or boo our butts off. I love it. Give me vocal fans, pro or con, over the tourist types who show up in Houston or Montreal and just sit there.

I got to know the world of football fans and their pride in it, how they would find a family away from home. Most of them came from broken families. It always had a bit of romance to me, when I went to the game with all these boys that would just die for each other.

It's almost a blessing for a new generation to say somebody like myself went to their school. It helps kids dream, and now they're getting into acting, football, whatever.

You know, us in Africa, all what we know, all what we dream about is football. Because when I was young, all what I tried to do, all what I had a chance to watch on TV was football.

Being in a fandom is something you don't understand unless you're in one. I think it stems off of everyone wants more of something.

Do I want to be the best defender in Europe? Of course. Any defender will tell you that - who wouldn't want to be the best?

Any time you go into the playoff game everyone's adrenaline is high and tensions are going, stuff like that.

I don't have any use for the hatred in a football stadium.

The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

Once Everton has touched you, nothing will be the same.

Guys care about sports teams. I'm not talking about simply rooting; I'm talking about a relationship that guys develop, a commitment to a sport team that guys take way more seriously than, for example, wedding vows.

There's not one club in Europe with an anthem like You'll Never Walk Alone. There's not one club in the world so united with their fans. I sat there watching the Liverpool fans and they sent shivers down my spine. A mass of 40,000 people became one force behind their team. That's something not many teams have. For that I admire Liverpool more than anything.

I have a profound dislike for showing off one's material wealth. This is insensitive and it is not what human hearts are made for. But what I like about China and sometimes miss in Europe is the entrepreneurial spirit of our young people, their ambition and dynamism.

I mean I was very shy but I was also very extroverted because I was doing plays. I'd been doing plays since I was a little kid. But, I did feel like an outsider because I went to like a 'college-prep' kind of high school that had a really big football team and was known for its program so I was like this weird boy that did plays.

You owe it to yourself to be the best you can possibly be - in baseball and in life.

When one loves, one does not calculate.

For me, Molly Hatchet is high school. It makes me feel like I have hair and a future.

People like the way dreams have of sticking to the soul.

It has been my dream since I was just a little kid to play in the NFL ... I can't tell you how excited I am for this dream to come true.

The roots of our Soccer Tribe lie deep in our primeval past.

The height of human desire is what wins, whether it’s on Normandy Beach or in Ohio Stadium.

Steven and I stood on the stage at the Boston Garden after the Stones had just played there and the stage was still up. We had been playing cards, maybe a high-school dance, to 400 or 500, maybe a thousand. We just stood on the stage and thought, 'Well,man,maybe someday.' In 4 years that was OUR stage.

I've thrown or broken a few clubs in my day. In fact, I guess at one time or another I probably held distance records for every club in the bag.

I think I got into acting because I kind of had not much else to do! I guess I was kind of looking for something challenging. I heard about the London Theater scene and it was very different from the upbringing that I had and it felt like a challenge. And the whole sort of London Theater schools, I was told that 6,000 apply and there are like 30 accepted to each one. I was like, "Yeah. Let's see if we can do that!"

I mean, why do people fight over sports? Because of the framework, the schematic of sports, those particular people seize upon these opportunities to be violent. And the number one problem using the same framework would be religion.