Quotes by Nick Hornby

Look at the statistics. Youre more likely to top yourself if youve just gone through a divorce. Or if youre anorexic. Or if youre unemployed. Or if youre a prostitute. Or if youve fought in a war, or if youve been raped, or if youve lost somebody . . . There are lots and lots of factors that push people over the edge; none of these factors are likely to make you feel anything but fucking miserable.

Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing until you cant take anymore, and then its off to the nearest multistory car park in the family hatchback with a length of rubber tubing. Surely thats fair enough? Surely the coroners report should read, He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become.

I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I’ve discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of.

You may think that you dont want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that youll read anything a good writer wants you to read.

What good were real feelings anyway?

I dont know you. The only thing I know about you is, youre reading this. I dont know if your happy or not; I dont know whether youre young or not. I sort of hope youre young and sad. If youre old and happy, I can imagine that youll smile to yourself when you hear me going, he broke my heart. Youll remember someone who broke your heart, and youll think to yourself, Oh yes, i remember how that feels. But you cant, you smug old git. Oh youll remember feeling sort of plesantly sad. You might remember listening to music and eating chocolates in your room, or walking along the embankment on your own, wrapped up in a winter coat and feeling lonely and brave. But can you remember how with every mouthful of food it felt like you were biting into your own stomach? Can you remember the taste of red wine as it came back up and into the toilet bowl? Can you remember dreaming every night that you were still together, that he was talking to you gently and touching you, so that every morning when you woke up you had to go through it all over again?

Im human. Thats how humans spend their time, doing shitty things.

That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I dont attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself.

Thats the trouble with good writers. Only the bad ones make you want to do the human thing and look away.

Those days are gone, and good fucking riddance to them; unhappiness really meant something back then. Now its just a drag, like a cold or having no money. If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.

(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the Arts and Lit non-fiction section)I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.

You know that things arent going well for you when you cant even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because theyll presume youre asking them to feel sorry for you.

You’re seeing someone else, aren’t you? Seeing someone else? How on earth could that explain any of this? Why would seeing someone else necessitate bringing home a middle­-aged woman, a teenaged punk and an American with a leather jacket and a Rod Stewart haircut? What would the story have been? But then, after reflection, I realised that Penny had probably been here before, and therefore knew that infidelity can usually provide the answer to any domestic mystery. If I had walked in with Sheena Easton and Donald Rumsfeld, Penny would probably have scratched her head for a few seconds before saying exactly the same thing. In other circumstances, on other evenings, it would have been the right conclusion, too; I used to be pretty resourceful when I was being unfaithful to Cindy, even if I do say so myself. I once drove a new BMW into a wall, simply because I needed to explain a four­-hour delay in getting home from work. Cindy came out into the street to inspect the crumpled bonnet, looked at me, and said, “You’re seeing someone else, aren’t you?” I denied it, of course. But then, anything – smashing up a new car, persuading Donald Rumsfeld to come to an Islington flat in the early hours of New Year’s Day – is easier than actually telling the truth. That look you get, the look which lets you see right through the eyes and down into the place where she keeps all the hurt and the rage and the loathing... Who wouldn’t go that extra yard to avoid it?

You dont ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. Its all about survival; its all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in, in the hope that you might be lucky, and the knife has actually been staunching the blood. You want to know the conventional medical wisdom? The conventional medical wisdom is that you keep the knife in. Really.

Did I do and say these things? Yes, I did. Are there any mitigating circumstances? Not really, unless any circumstances {in other words, context) can be regarded as mitigating. And before you judge, although you have probably already done so, go away and write down the four worst things you have done to a partner, even if - especially if - your partner doesnt know about them. Dont dress things up, or try to explain them; just write them down, in a list, in the plainest language possible. Finished? Ok, so whos the arsehole now?

The trick, it seems to me, is to stave off regret. That’s what the whole thing is about. And we can’t stave it off forever, because it is impossible not to make the mistakes that let regret in, but the best of us manage to limp on into our sixties or seventies before we succumb. Me, I made it to about thirty-seven, and David made it to the same age, and my brother gave up the ghost even before that. And I’m not sure that there is a cure for regret. I suspect not.

Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, theyve started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: Im sorry, Ive let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.

If I could have all of those things, I wouldnt mind if I touched her or not.

That was his mother. When she wasnt crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

And I have to say, books haven’t helped much with all this. Because whenever you read anything about love, whenever anyone tries to define it, there’s always a state or an abstract noun, and I try to think of it like that. But actually, love is… Well, it’s just you. And when you go, it’s gone. Nothing abstract about it.