Nick Hornby Quotes

There's this constant guilt that comes with parenting. You always feel like you're never enough. If you're confident in your parenting, you probably suck at it.

I don't think I can be too hard on myself.

As a mom, I think you always wonder if you could be doing more.

Every so often, I'll look at myself in the mirror and go, 'You're a bad mother,' you know? Like, 'You're a bad dude, man, and you're gonna show the world who you are when the time is right.'

I don't like reading good things about myself. With the criticism and the negative things, I always think that makes me better.

I'm kind of a failure. I mean, I'll be honest. I'm successful in that I'm getting to work on great stuff, but I think I'm a failure in all the personal stuff that is most important to me.

I'm not as thrilled with myself as I used to be.

Focusing on the way I look makes me uncomfortable. I try to focus on the way I feel - I know what makes me feel better about myself. Reading my child a story makes me feel great, doing my hair nicely doesn't.

It's murder to doubt yourself in life. It took until I was 45 to get to that point. As hard as it is in your work, it's harder in your life. But it can be done.

Somebody once told me that self-punishment is worse than any other punishment.

I too have my own demons, and I have struggled. I've made my own mistakes, and I'm not proud of them.

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

Games that make you feel good about yourself are good games to be playing.

I'm not a bad parent and partner, even if I make a thousand mistakes.

I'm always trying to do the impossible to please people. It comes from not being secure in myself and not looking at the things within I have to fix. Sometimes you keep going because you don't want to face the truth.

Everything becomes so problematic because of basic faults: from a discontent with myself.

I don't think anybody feels like they're a good parent. Or if people think they're good parents, they ought to think again.

Do I really need to prove anything to anybody? I don't feel that I have to prove anything. The only thing that I have to prove is to myself, that I have value.

I think I'm great. I mean, I might as well come out and say it. Like most people, I have an ego and I'm in show business, so you have to have kind of a healthy, conflagrated ego to a degree. On the other hand, I'm consumed, like a lot of people, with self-doubt and loathing and guilt.

No one is perfect and everyone wishes they could change something about themselves.

I have a lot of insecurities, but you learn from your failures.

Unless I try, I'm never really going to be at ease with myself.

I'm drawn to failure. I feel like I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.

I wonder, 'Why did I do that line that way?' And I also constantly think I'm fat and hate my teeth. But I've gotten better over the years. I've started to accept.

I liked myself better when I wasn't me.