Nick Hornby Quotes About Reading

Quotes about: Reading

• Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path.

  Nick Hornby

  War, Book, Reading

  Nick Hornby (2004). “The Polysyllabic Spree”, McSweeneys Books

• Why does reading freak people out so much? Sure, I could be pretty anti-social when we were on the road, but if I was playing a Gameboy hour after hour, no one would be on my case. In my social circle, blowing up space monsters is socially acceptable in a way that American Pastoral isn't.

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Circles, Space

  "A Long Way Down". Book by Nick Hornby, 2005.

• When you're unhappy, I guess everything in the world - reading, eating, sleeping - has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier.

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Sleep, Unhappy

  Nick Hornby (2005). “A Long Way Down”, p.137, Penguin UK

• I would like my personal reading map to resemble a map of the British Empire circa 1900.

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Maps, Empires

  Nick Hornby (2006). “Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt”, McSweeneys Books

• It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already.

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Opportunity, Air

• Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini.

  Nick Hornby

  Christmas, Real, Reading

  Nick Hornby (2004). “The Polysyllabic Spree”, McSweeneys Books

• Reading begets reading.

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Begets

  Nick Hornby (2008). “Shakespeare Wrote for Money”, McSweeneys Books

• Clockers" asks--almost in passing, and there's a lot more to it than this--a pretty interesting question: if you choose to work for the minimum wage when everyone around you is pocketing thousands from drug deals, then what does that do to you, to your head and to your heart? (Hornby's thoughts after reading "Clockers" by Richard Price)

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Heart, Interesting

• Several months later, and I have finally read one of the three (books), even though I wanted to read all three of them immediately. What happened in between? Other books, is what happened. Other books, other moods, other obligations, other appetites, other reading journeys.

  Nick Hornby

  Book, Reading, Journey

  Nick Hornby (2012). “More Baths Less Talking: Notes from the Reading Life of a Celebrated Author Locked in Battle with Football, Family, and Time Itself”, p.82, McSweeney's

• All I know is that you can get very little from a book that is making you weep with the effort of reading it. You won’t remember it, and you’ll learn nothing from it, and you’ll be less likely to choose a book over Big Brother next time you have a choice.

  Nick Hornby

  Brother, Book, Reading

  Nick Hornby (2006). “Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt”, McSweeneys Books

• So this is supposed to be about the how, and when, and why, and what of reading -- about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time.

  Nick Hornby

  Book, Reading, Cat

  Nick Hornby (2006). “The complete polysyllabic spree”

• No time spent with a book is ever entirely wasted, even if the experience is not a happy one: there’s always something to be learned. It’s just that, every now and again, you can hit a patch of reading that makes you feel as if you’re pootling about. [...] But what can you do about it? We don’t choose to waste our reading time; it just happens. The books let us down.

  Nick Hornby

  Book, Reading, Waste

  "Stuff I've been reading". www.believermag.com. July/August 2011.

• Surely we all occasionally buy books because of a daydream we're having - a little fantasy about the people we might turn into one day, when our lives are different, quieter, more introspective, and when all the urgent reading, whatever that might be, has been done. We never arrive at that point, needless to say.

  Nick Hornby

  Book, Reading, People

  Nick Hornby (2012). “More Baths Less Talking: Notes from the Reading Life of a Celebrated Author Locked in Battle with Football, Family, and Time Itself”, p.27, McSweeney's

• Every time people force themselves to carry on with a book they're not enjoying, they reinforce the idea that reading is a duty.

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Book, Ideas

  "This much I know". Interview with Simon Garfield, www.theguardian.com. April 19, 2008.

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