Quotes from About a Boy

“There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“Loving people, and allowing yourself to be loved, was only worth the risk if the odds were in your favor, but they quite clearly weren't. There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them. So how smart did you have to be to work out that it just wasn't worth the risk?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“Because . . . most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.'
'Too stupid.'
'You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?'
'I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watch the next episode.'
'Exactly.'
'That's the point? NYPD Blue? Jesus.' It was worse than he thought.
'No, no. The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point. I don't know if you even realize it, but on the quiet you don't think life's too bad. You love things. Telly. Music. Food.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life, some indication of how deep a hole you had managed to burrow for yourself”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“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 any more.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“You wouldn't believe that so much could change just because a relationship ended.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“Marcus couldn't believe it. Dead. A dead duck. OK, he'd been trying to hit it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things, and none of them had ever happened before. He'd tried to get the highest score on the Stargazer machine in the kabab shop on Hornsey road - nothing. He'd tried to read Nicky's thoughts by staring at the back of his head every maths lesson for a week - nothing. It really annoyed him that the only thing he'd ever achieved through trying was something he hadn't really wanted to do that much in the first place. And anyway, since when did hitting a bird with a sandwich ever kill it? People spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“[...] falling in love with someone beautiful and intelligent and the rest of it, then feeling like a blank twit put you at something of a disadvantage.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“But all three of them had had to lose things in order to gain other things. Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance, and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel; and Fiona had lost a big chunk of Marcus, and she got to stay away from the casualty ward; and Marcus had lost himself, and got to walk home from school with his shoes on.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“His way of coping with the days was to think of activities as units of time, each unit consisting of about thirty minutes. Whole hours, he found, were more intimidating, and most things one could do in a day took half an hour. Reading the paper, having a bath, tidying the flat, watching Home and Away and Countdown, doing a quick crossword on the toilet, eating breakfast and lunch, going to the local shops… That was nine units of a twenty-unit day (the evenings didn’t count) filled by just the basic necessities. In fact, he had reached a stage where he wondered how his friends could juggle life and a job. Life took up so much time, so how could one work and, say, take a bath on the same day? He suspected that one or two people he knew were making some pretty unsavoury short cuts.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“He loved Nirvana, but at his age they were kind of a guilty pleasure. All that rage and pain and self-hatred! Will got a bit...fed up sometimes, but he couldn't pretend it was anything stronger than that. So now he used loud angry rock music as a replacement for real feelings, rather than as an expression of them, and he didn't even mind very much. What good were real feelings anyway?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“And it's not like you never do anything wrong ever, is it?' said Marcus. 'I mean...' He had to be careful here. He knew he couldn't say too much or even anything at all about the hospital stuff. 'I mean how come I got to know Will in the first place?'

Because you threw a bloody great baguette at a duck's head and killed it, basically,' said Will.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“...You can find people. It's like those acrobatic displays.... Those ones when you stand on top of loads of people in a pyramid. It doesn't really matter who they are, as long as they're there and you don't let them go away without finding someone else.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“When it came down to it, he just wasn't that engaged. You had to be engaged to be a vegetarian; you had to be engaged to sing "Both Sides Now" with your eyes closed; when it came down to it, you had to be engaged to be a mother.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“Marcus couldn’t believe it. Dead. A dead duck. OK, he'd been trying to hit it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things, and none of them had ever happened before. He'd tried to get te highest score on the Stargazer machine in the kebab shop on Hornsey Road--nothing. He's tried to read Nicky’s thoughts by staring at the back of his head every maths lesson for a week--nothing. It really annoyed him that the only thing he'd ever achieved was something he hadn't really wanted to do that much in the first place. And anyway, since when did hitting a bird with a sandwich kill it? Kids must spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic? There must have been something wrong with it. It was probably about to die from a heart attack or something; it was just a coincidence. But if it was, nobody would believe him. If there were any witnesses, they'd only have seen the bread hit the duck right on the back of the head, and then seen it keel over. saw it die. They'd put two and two together and make five, and he'd be imprisoned for a crime he never committed.

... "What's that floating next to it?" Will asked. "Is that the bread you threw at it?"
Marcus nodded unhappily.
"That's not a sandwich, that's a bloody french loaf. No wonder it keeled over. That would've killed me.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“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, quote from About a Boy

“What good were real feelings anyway?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“Will had never wanted to fall in love. When it had happened to friends, it had always struck him as a peculiarly unpleasant-seeming experience, what with all the loss of sleep and weight, and the unhappiness when it was reciprocated, and the suspect, dippy happiness when it was working out.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“How come every squitty little shitty snotty bastard knows my name?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“He'd still be who he was, and that, it seemed to him, was the basic problem.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“Reciprocation was a pretty powerful stimulant to the imagination.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“Will hated Christmas, for the obvious reason: people knocked on his door, singing the song he hated more than any song in the world and expected him to give them money.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“He wanted Rachel to be his wife, his lover, the centre of his whole world; a girlfriend implied that he would see her from time to time, that she would have some kind of independent existence away from him, and he didn't want that at all.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“His father fell off a window-ledge. No wonder his mum had cheered up.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“He had to say that the thing he found most attractive about her was that she had tried to kill herself. Now that was interesting-- sexy, almost, in a morbid kind of way.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

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“ОДУШЕВЕНО

Една шапка – мека, кафява, филцова, с провиснала периферия и плетен ширит около бомбето – се мъдреше сред другите, като подскачаше поради неравностите на пътя, преодолявани от колелата на моторното средство, което япревозваше – нея, самата шапка. На всяка спирка, когато пътниците се качваха и слизаха, я отместваха странично, а понякога прекалено, което в края на краищата много я ядоса – нея, самата шапка. Шапката изрази гнева си с човешки глас, изтръгнал се от една снабдена с множество отверстия валчеста и плътна маса с костна структура, която се намираше под нея – под самата шапка. После тя изведнъж се устреми напред, защото се оказа, че има свободно място за нея – за самата шапка.
Час-два по-късно видях как тя – самата шапка, – се носи на метър и шейсет и шест от земята и снове пред гара Сен Лазар. Един приятел я съветваше да прибави копче на палтото си – нея, самата шапка… Допълнително копче… На нейното палто… Да ѝ каже това… На нея… На самата шапка.”
― Raymond Queneau, quote from Exercises in Style

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