Nick Hornby Quotes

Often people who are wonderful with animals aren't always terribly good with human beings.

When I'm around animals, I don't pay attention to people.

...if you fall into a lion's pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not because it's hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it's bloodthirsty, but because you've invaded it's territory.

There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.

Life cannot be classified in terms of a simple neurological ladder, with human beings at the top; it is more accurate to talk of different forms of intelligence, each with its strengths and weaknesses. This point was well demonstrated in the minutes before last December's tsunami, when tourists grabbed their digital cameras and ran after the ebbing surf, and all the 'dumb' animals made for the hills.

Animals have always left me with a curiosity about human nature. I trust animals more than most people.

Animals were my passion from even before I could speak apparently. When I was about 10, 11 I fell in love with Tarzan.

I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear, or anything but that vain animal who is so proud of being rational.

People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.

Another werewolf thing. Like most animals, we spent a large part of our lives engaged in the three Fs of basic survival. Feeding, fighting and... reproduction.

Tsornin's nostrils showed red, but his ears were as alert as ever, and occasionally he would rub his nose gently against the nape of her neck, just in case she was momentarily not thinking about him.

I always find you go back to an animal; it will always show you the sort of primal aspects of behavior. You always know how to respond if you choose that.

The only animal from which humans have nothing to learn, in fact, is the sheep. Humans have already learned everything the sheep's got to teach.

Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

One of the things I like best about animals in the wild is that they're always off on some errand. They have appointments to keep. It's only we humans who wonder what we're here for.

Hazing is both testing and training to subordinate self to the team.

The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends.

Animals have no unconscious, because they have a territory. Men have only had an unconscious since they lost a territory.

We are the only animals that let our kids come back home.

You walk into the room like a camel and then put your eyes in your pockets and your nose on the ground.

The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning he blunders and betrays.

We're social animals; we're meant to be together, but we were never necessarily meant to be together without being together. That was never the plan, I don't think.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long.