Nick Hornby Quotes

I read very little contemporary anything... I don't think I read what other people read, but then why would I, considering what I do?

I enjoy being influenced by other writers.

You can never tell when an artist really will take up someone's work and work with it happily.

The paintings by Van Gough and Chagall had a big influence on me.

I love TV in a way that I don't love any other medium.

I wouldn't be as comfortable with who I am if it had not been for Prince. I mean, my label 'Wondaland' would not exist without 'Paisley Park' coming before us.

I didn't watch TV or movies as a kid.

Everything I do references something that influenced me.

I can't turn hip-hop off, just like I can't turn comic books off. It blends into everything for me.

It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it.

People have asked me throughout the years which directors have influenced me. I don't know their names, because I was mostly influenced when I'd see a film and think, "Man, I want to be sure to never do anything like that." So I never learned their names. It wasn't a matter of copying or emulating somebody I admired. It was getting rid of a lot of stuff.

I saw a lot of lousy movies and watched a ton of crappy television and read a bunch of utterly forgettable books and comics and listened to hours of junk music as a kid. And I'm still drawing profitably in my own art on some of the tawdry treasure I stored up in those years.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

I can't imagine turning into one of those codgers who no longer reads fiction. I'm regularly stirred by it and suffer no anxiety of influence. Influence me! That was my credo then, as I was developing and learning, and remains so now, as I'm developing and learning.

What I want to do is make things that I think people want to watch. I'm a film fan, so I think I'm in touch with other film fans and that they might want to watch stuff. The other reason I really don't care is because no matter what you do in life, no matter what you wear, or what you say, people are going to like it or they're not. And that is all. Everything, down to the socks I chose today - people are going to like them or they're not and there's nothing you can do about that.

Literature usually begets literature.

I wanted to be a painter and an artist. And it's interesting that in some of my later musical works, I refer so often and associate myself with works of art.

Your creativity is waiting for you like a dancing partner.

One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, “As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .” When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories.

I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read... I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from.

I tended not to be concerned about whether a song was going to be a hit when I wrote it. Because it became evident that none of us knew what was a hit and what wasn't. So I thought if I just write what I like, why shouldn't people like what I like?

A writer or painter cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive.

Folks wanna be like Will I Am not Bill I Am. They wanna be like Stevie Wonder not Steve Jobs.

When I've heard a piece of music or seen a painting that moves me, it gives me something.

One of our favorite Joe Strummer quotes was, "No input, no output." Meaning, we're going to hear a band, we're going to go to a museum, or we're going to go hang out with some writer that we admire. We're going to get some input, because if we don't, then we have nothing. It's a circle. It's a respiratory thing.