Nick Hornby Quotes

Kids don't even read comic books anymore. They've got more important things to do - like video games.

The American might be defined as a newspaper-reading animal.

Whenever I sign books, I get this line over and over again from men: "I don't read fiction, but my wife does. Would you sign the book to her?" What are those men doing there? And where are their wives?

I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something. But I couldnt figure out a polite way to ask.

Life is too short for reading inferior books.

It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry.

That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Deptford: Mrs Dempster had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been-no, she had yielded because a man wanted her. The subject was not one that could be freely discussed even among intimates, but it was understood without saying that if women began to yield for such reasons as that, marriage and society would not last long. Any man who spoke up for Mrs Dempster probably believed in Free Love. Certainly he associated sex with pleasure, and that put him in a class with filthy thinkers like Cece Athelstan.

What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?

The biggest teenage taboo is being strait-laced. It's easy to tell a researcher you went to a house party that turned into an orgy. It's less easy to say you like eating toast and watching QI.

Roy received my comments with a forced smile. "Hardy, didn't I warn you not to date a woman who reads?" Hardy seemed amused by my outspokenness. "Keeps the arguing to a minimum," he replied. "No point in trying when I know she's going to win.

It's funny how something so normal and mundane that you see every day-your body-can be controversial. The shock value is intense. It's like carrying an art piece around with you all the time.

It is no more expected of most producers to read a book than it is, say, of Ted Williams to dust off home plate.

Generally as a rule I am not. Unless I am super in love with a particular author, because I just want to read masterpieces. I just want to read one amazing book after another. As a completist you are generally reading the bad ones.

The big problem in America is that everyone is spending 2-3 hours a day watching TV. If you spend that same amount of time reading, you'll be in the top 1% of whatever your field is.

When was it that people decided as a society that your body is in one place and your sexuality in another place, something like a hat, or a coat, that when you leave home you hang it and when you come back home you say, "Ah! Let's wear my sexuality! I might wear it tonight"? It is something that belongs to your body.

I read a lot. I liked a tremendous number of poets and writers. The person whose work I liked the most was Joyce.

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals --or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?

The fact that we don't read more books in America can be traced squarely to the fact that we have newspapers that are about a hundred times as big as the newspapers anywhere else.

Mobile is great for us. I think, even though the size of the screen doesn't give everything The New Yorker has to offer, people are spending a lot of time reading - and reading seriously - on the phone.

Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.

Morality is character and conduct such as is required by the circle or community in which the man's life happens to be placed. It shows how much good men require of us.

I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable.

It's so acceptably easy for a woman not to strive too hard, not to be too adventure-crazed, not to take too many risks, not to enjoy sex with full candor ... It isn't seemly for a woman to have that much zest.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, running around, not married, staying out all night. Ashamed!" "Ashamed!" my grandmother echoed. Good to know they still agreed on things after forty-three years of marriage.

I do 30 to 40 books a year, so it's a fair amount of reading. Back and forth between nonfiction and fiction. I usually have three or four things that are open on my desk, on my bed, on audiobook in the car.