Quotes from Nick Hornby

Everything's complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness.

I didn't really want to write about music very much in 'High Fidelity.' I wanted to write about the relationship stuff, and the music stuff is kind of a bit of fun on top and something to frame it with.

Life isn't, and has never been, a 2-0 home victory after a fish and chip lunch.

I'm quite gloomy. I just am one of those people, vaguely lugubrious.

The writing in those HBO dramas, like 'The Wire,' is as good as anything I've seen.

I'd like my life to be like a Bruce Springsteen song. Just once. I know I'm not born to run, I know that Seven Sisters' Road is nothing like Thunder Road, but feelings can't be different, can they?

...I feel as though I made a face and the wind changed, and now I have to go through life grimacing in this horrible way.

That's why; he's worried about how his life is turning out, and he's lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all

As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of the people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive.

It was hopeless, life, really. It was set up all wrong.

It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways.

If it's not gripping you, you are reading the wrong book.

Writing is about confidence and wondering what the point of anything is.

At a crude estimate, I must have played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times.

Radio football is football reduced to its lowest common denominator.

I used to go and see the Clash a fair bit. I did think they were dead cool, and very handsome.

I'm a reader for lots of reasons. On the whole, I tend to hang out with readers, and I'm scared they wouldn't want to hang out with me if I stopped.

Home was extremely normal. But my dad's life was quite exotic, really. When I went away to stay with him, it was a different world. I never wanted to be in that world. I was much happier with my mates at home.

I hated teaching Shakespeare. In order for the students to understand what was going on, you had to tell them the story of 'Macbeth' or whatever. Shakespeare is about character and language, and they didn't get any of that.

If you can get every kid to have found a book that he or she loves, then you've done a great job.

'An Education' was a complicated piece of work because it came from a tiny essay, so it took me a while to find the story I wanted to tell and the characters I wanted to tell it about. That really only emerged after four or five drafts.

Men use music and football to fill up holes in their lives.

Words don't come very easily to me. Which, given my profession, is a worrying impediment.