Nick Hornby Quotes

I know that we're being inexorably taken over by the Americans. Without a doubt. I don't mean invaded or anything like that, just taken over. By degrees.

A real danger threatens the unity of the Canadian people and the preservation of its political existence. This danger is the slow but sure penetration of Americanism into all phases of our national, political, and social life.

Learn to think Imperially.

The jury is still out, and may always be out over whether the Britain benefited from the Empire or not.

The British Empire (with the exception of a very short period in the 1930s) was a free trade empire, unlike all the other great empires of the world …. Anyone could trade with the British Empire.

His Majesty’s dominions, on which the sun never sets.

The sun never sets on the British Empire. But it rises every morning. The sky must get awfully crowded.

I always say that, to me, it starts with reading. This is something I tell high school kids, college kids, people trying to get into the business, that it's just so much about reading. Read, read, read. So much of everything else falls into place when you just do a ton of reading.

Half my life is in book's written pages. Live and learn from fools and from sages.

Reading is a mighty engine, beside which steam and electricity sink into insignificance.

Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read.

Read much, but not many works.

Missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All you had to do was to cure the head savage´s sick daughter by a miracle- a miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance- and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert´s enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself easy now. He would take the ax and convert the rest of the nation himself.

It is often said that reading is a gift, but to my mind that is an insufficient description, for the size of the gift of reading is so vast that it is difficult to see what is outside its wrapping.

Colonialism has a bad reputation in the modern context, but Colonial Africa was a far better place for both black and white before the colonists gave up.

I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

I shall endeavor to marshal British opinion against a course of action which would bring in my opinion the greatest evils upon the people of India, upon the people of Great Britain and upon the British Empire itself.

I'd like to thank readers. Every time you open a book, it is a strike against ignorance. Unless you're reading Sarah Palin.

We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but to read. Reading almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.

Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

The great thing about reading is that it broadens your life

The builders of the British Indian Empire have patiently built its four pillars-the European interests, the army, the Indian princes and the communal divisions.

Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.

No system in history capitalism has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, devouring the resources of whole regions, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, and standardizing the varieties of human experience.

My friend, Dennis Mathis, was reading Eastern European and Japanese experimental writers, and I brought the Latin American writers to his attention, so we exchanged books and bounced off one another.