Nick Hornby Quotes

I am influenced by books which don't have their eye on the endgame, but which try to be entertaining on each and every page.

I find that short stories are almost like palate cleansers or brain cleansers.

Obviously people read the books in order to be entertained.

A novel ensures that we can look before and after, take action at whatever pace we choose, read again and again, skip and go back. The story in a book is humble and serviceable, available, friendly, is not switched on and off but taken up and put down, lasts a lifetime.

I love to read, and TV seemed more like a good book, with these incredible series unfolding like chapters in a novel.

A novel, at least for me, cannot be visualized at one time.

I tend to really enjoy being swept up in fiction. I love a good story and I admire fiction authors.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

But basically, I'm trying to write a fun story.

Books in general are great, but I'm a fiction lover, and I will continue to do it.

I would like to write a book that wasn't so violent and weird, but I just don't think I can do that with my talent. I don't think it would come off.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

I learnt to love reading. And then I started scribbling stories, and I liked that even more.

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

People really want to think that these things really happened. I don't know why that important, but I know that when I finish reading a novel or something, I want to know how much of that really happened to this author.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.

I think of my novels as entertainments.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.

Writing is hard work. Generating stories that catch people's attention and holding it are very difficult.

Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.

There are a lot of good stories out there, but I haven't found too many great scripts.

I wrote a novel. It's called 'The Middlesteins.' It's fiction. It's not a memoir. I'm not a spokesperson.