Quotes from Nick Hornby

Forse noi viviamo troppo protesi verso un apice, dico noi che assorbiamo emozioni da mattina a sera, e di conseguenza non riusciamo a sentirci semplicemente contenti: noi dobbiamo essere o disperati o al settimo cielo e questi stati d'animo sono difficili da raggiungere in una relazione stabile e solida.

Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience.

You have potential. I'm here to bring that out. Potential as what? As a human being. You have all the basic ingredients. You're really likable, when you put your mind to it. You make people laugh, when you can be bothered, and you're kind, and when you decide you like someone then that person feels as though she's the center of the whole world, and that's a very sexy feeling. It's just that most of the time you can't be bothered.

And now here Annie was, allowing her day to become gloriously colored by a communication from a man she'd never even met.

Una vez más, el fútbol como metáfora.

There have been times recently, since the begining of our troubles, when the site of David awake active, conscious, walking and talking has made me want to retch, so acute is my loathing of him.

This is my life, and it's nice to be able to wade in it, immerse your arms in it, touch it.

I am cowed—by her intelligence, and her ferocity, and the way she's always right. Or at least, she's always right enough to shut me up.   5.

sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time.

The anger was clearly real, though. It was in there, sloshing around, looking for the nearest hole to escape through.

I can see everything once it's already happened--I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.

those places are reserved for the kind of humiliations are heartbreaks that you're just not capable of delivering. That probably sounds crueler than it is meant to, but the fact is that we're too old to make each other miserable, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing...

Quasi tutta la gente ha una corda che la lega a qualcuno, e la corda può essere corta, oppure lunga. È che tu non lo sai quanto è lunga. Non è tua la scelta.

Jen leggeva. Amava i libri... io, no: a me facevano paura. Mi facevan paura quando c'era lei, e me ne fanno di più adesso. Che cosa avevano dentro? Che cosa le hanno detto quando era infelice e ascoltava solo loro, e nessun altro - né le sue amiche né sua sorella, nessuno?

Capisci che non stai andando bene quando non puoi raccontare agli altri i fatti più semplici della tua vita, solo perché immaginerebbero che gli stai chiedendo pietà. Secondo me è per questo che una si sente così lontana da tutti, alla fine: qualunque cosa pensi di dirgli, finisce sempre che li fai star male.

We wrote about whatever we wanted, and we ended up with eighteen million people watching us. That's the thing about television comedy, isn't it? It makes us all a part of something. That's what I love about it.

But I want to see Clara, Charlie's friend, who's right up my street. I want to see her because I don't know where my street is; I don't even know which part of town it's in, which city, which country, so maybe she'll enable me to get my bearings.

I have no idea what the record for being effectively dead is, but Fabrice Muamba didn't seem to have broken it.

When even the scrupulously detached BBC is exhorting us to talk to God, you know something is going on.

I watched a lot of drunk players, too, I learned from the autobiographies published after they had retired.

How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you just have to put a fuck.

Look at all the things that can go wrong for men. There's the nothing-happening-at-all problem, the too-much-happening-too-soon problem, the dismal-droop-after-a-promising-beginning problem; there's the size-doesn't-matter-except-in-my-case problem, the failing-to-deliver-the-goods problem… and what do women have to worry about? A handful of cellulite? Join the club. A spot of I-wonder-how-I-rank? Ditto.

She had to defend him in order to defend herself. That was why people were so prickly about their partners, even their ex-partners. To admit that Duncan wasn't up to much was to own up publicly to the terrible waste of time, and terrible lapses in judgment and taste. She had stuck up for Spandau Ballet in just the same way at school, even after she had stopped liking them.

In retrospect, their best chance of doing it this way was against Arsenal, in the game they won 8–2. They only needed another nine that afternoon – and they missed at least fifteen good chances.