Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that Dickens is estimated to have invented thirteen thousand characters? Thirteen thousand! The population of a small town!)

— Nick Hornby

Will wrestled with his conscience, grappled it to the ground and sat on it until he couldn't hear a squeak out of it.

— Nick Hornby

Women who disapprove of men - and there's plenty to disapprove of - should remember how we started out, and how far we had to travel.

— Nick Hornby

Years and years ago, I read a great interview with Jam and Lewis, the R&B producers, in which they described what it was like to be members of Prince's band. They'd sit down, and Prince would tell them what he wanted them to play, and they'd explain that they couldn'tt--they weren't quick enough, or good enough. And Prince would push them and push them until they mastered it, and then just when they were feeling pleased with themselves for accomplishing something they didn't know they had the capacity for, he'd tell them the dance steps he needed to accompany the music. This story has stuck with me, I think, because it seems like an encapsulation of the very best and most exciting kind of creative process.

— Nick Hornby

You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's 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.

— Nick Hornby

You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn't force your way into someone else's, because then it wouldn't be a bubble anymore.

— Nick Hornby

You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you.

— Nick Hornby

You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read.

— Nick Hornby

You're fucked. You thought you were going to be someone, but now it's obvious you're nobody. Furthermore, you haven't got as much talent as you thought you had, and there was no Plan B, and you got no skills and no education, and now you're looking at forty or fifty years of nothing. Less than nothing, probably. That's pretty heavy. That's worse than having the brain thing, because what you got now will take a lot longer to kill you. You've got the choice of a slow, painful death, or a quick, merciful one.

— Nick Hornby

You're not allowed to say anything about books because they're books, and books are, you know, God.

— Nick Hornby