Nick Hornby Quotes

There is no child left within me, none whatsoever.

A woman should never underestimate the power of the child in the man. Sometimes the child seems to be in the driver's seat at the very moment when all a man's adult judgment and insight is needed.

But I don't think I've grown up to be a damaged adult.

I am 30, but there are things about me that are still 15.

We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult. Adulthood is not a goal. It's not seen as a gift.

Adults are just children sometimes. But evil, hurt children.

The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult's reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge - a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion.

Something most people don't know about me is that I never grew up.

When there's an adult person who's scaring you, you grow up pretty quickly.

I have a theory that there are still parts of our mental worlds that are still based around the age of between five and eight, and we just kind of pretend to be grown-up.

I never was a child.

I think your 20s are the hardest part of life. I mean, everyone goes on about how hard it is to be a teenager, but actually I think it's tougher to be in your 20s because you're expected to be a grownup and expected to earn your own living and be successful and I think you feel like a kid still.

I never fully got to experience my childhood. I've spent a lot of time having to sort of grow myself up in many ways and also to sort of slow myself down and allow myself to live at the pace that I am.

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.

Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.

After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter.

We tend to think of orphans as being the protagonist of stories we read when we're kids, and yet here you are: you're an adult, you're supposed to manage, you're supposed to get over it, you're supposed to go on with your life, and you feel like a lost child.

I'm only waiting for my wife to grow up.

I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve been through to get there.

What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?

How I imagined myself being 50 is not how I am feeling now. You think you'll be different, but I still feel like I am about 12 years old - mentally, not physically.

I was painfully shy when I was younger but at some point you've gotta grow up. I think the genius in the man-boy thing is you tap into a woman's motherly instincts.

The problem is simply this: no one can feel like CEO of his or her life in the presence of the people who toilet trained her and spanked him when he was naughty. We may have become Masters of the Universe, accustomed to giving life and taking it away, casually ordering people into battle or out of their jobs . . . and yet we may still dirty our diapers at the sound of our mommy's whimper or our daddy's growl.

Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear...Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.

There's no such thing as a grown up person.