“For the best part of 40 years she had genuinely believed that not doing things would somehow prevent regret, when, of course, the exact opposite was true.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“So it's not about what you do. It can't be, can it? It has to be about how you are, how you love, how you treat yourself and those around you, and that's where I get eaten up.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“We get together with people because they're the same or because they're different, and in the end we split with them for exactly the same reasons.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“The truth about autobiographical songs, he realized, was that you had to make the present become the past, somehow: you had to take a feeling or a friend or a woman and turn whatever it was into something that was over, so that you could be definitive about it. You had to put it in a glass case and look at it and think about it until it gave up its meaning.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“But then, that was the trouble with relationships generally. They had their own temperature and there was no thermostat.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“Everyone disliked their partners at some time or another, she knew that. But she’d spent her hours in the dark wondering whether she’d ever liked him. Would it really have been so much worse to spend those years alone? Why did there have to be someone else in the room while she was eating, watching TV, sleeping?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“She stopped typing. If she’d been using pen and paper, she would have screwed the paper up in disgust, but there wasn’t a satisfying equivalent with email, seeing as everything was designed to stop you making a mistake. She needed a fuck-it key, something that made a satisfying ka-boom noise when you thumped it.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“He was now beginning to wonder whether the jigsaw was the correct metaphor for relationships between me and women after all. It didn't take account of the sheer stubbornness of human beings, their determination to affix themselves to another even if they didn't fit. They didn't care about jutting off at weird angles, and they didn't care about phone booths and Mary, Queen of Scots. They were motivated not by seamless and sensible matching, but by eyes, mouths, smiles, minds, breasts and chests and bottoms, wit, kindness, charm, romantic history and all sorts of other things that made straight edges impossible to achieve.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“She was trying to say something else; she was trying to say that the inability to articulate what one feels in any satisfactory way is one of our enduring tragedies. It wouldn't have been much, and it wouldn't have been useful, but it would have been something that reflected the gravity and the sadness inside her. Instead, she had snapped at him for being a loser. It was as if she were trying to find a handhold on the boulder of her feelings, and had merely ended up with grit under her nails.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“He had never once felt itchy, in the way that two connecting pieces of a jigsaw never felt itchy, as far as one could tell. If one were to imagine, for the sake of argument, that jigsaw pieces had thoughts and feelings, then it was possible to imagine them saying to themselves, 'I'm going to stay here. Where else would I go?' And if another jigsaw piece came along, offering its tabs and blanks enticingly in an attempt to lure one of the pieces away, it would be easy to resist temptation. 'Look,' the object of the seducer's admiration would say. 'You're a bit of telephone box, and I'm the face of Mary, Queen of Scots. We just wouldn't look right together.' And that would be that.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“It was hopeless, life, really. It was set up all wrong.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“The artistic temperament is particularly unhelpful if it is just that, with no end product.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“We're here for such a short amount of time. Why do we spend any of it building sandcastles?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“Linda seemed to recognize loneliness. Possibly she could see it sitting opposite her, sipping lager and trying not to lose its temper. It was an illness, loneliness--it made you weak, gullible, feebleminded.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“He would read up on parenting, if he thought it would help, but his errors always seemed too basic for the manuals. "Always tell your kids they have siblings..." He couldn't imagine any child-raising guru taking the trouble to write that down. Maybe there was a gap in the market.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“The cliche had it that kids were the future, but that wasn't it: they were the unreflective, active present. They were not themselves nostalgic, because they couldn't be, and they retarded nostalgia in their parents. Even as they were getting sick and being bullied and becoming addicted to heroin and getting pregnant, they were in the moment, and she wanted to be in it with them. She wanted to worry herself sick about schools and bullying and drugs.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“There was an awful lot to be said for familiarity, if you thought about it. It was an extremely underrated virtue, ignorable until the very moment that you were in danger of losing whatever or whoever it was that was familiar.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“He'd told her it was just a scratch and got cross when she hadn't offered morphine.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“I'm coming to London next week, by the way, in unhappy circumstances. Are we getting on fine as we are? Or would you like a drink?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“I’m still pretty sick about what I’ve lost, but I only admit it to myself late at night, which is probably why I’m not the best sleeper.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“You know that bad people can make great art, don’t you?’Said Annie.
‘Yes, of course. Some of the people whose art I admire the most are assholes.’
‘Dickens wasn’t nice to his wife.’
‘Dickens didn’t make a memoir called I’m Nice to My Wife.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“Oh, it was a complicated business, loving art. It involved a lot more ill will than one might have suspected.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“But the internet had changed everything: nobody was forgotten anymore.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“She was the spare room that never got tidied, the e-mail that never got answered, the loan that never got repaid, the symptom that never got described to a doctor.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“Do you need someone to talk to?" she said gently.
"Oh. Thank you. No, no, I'm fine."
He touched his face – he'd been crying harder than he'd realized.
"You sure? You don't look fine."
"No, really. I've just . . . I've just had a very intense emotional experience." He held out one of his iPod headphones, as if that would explain it. "On here."
"You're crying about music?"
The woman looked at him as if he were some kind of pervert.
"Well," said Duncan. "I'm not crying about it. I'm not sure that's the right preposition."
She shook her head and walked off.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“It was the absences that had made her think, not the presences.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“She regretted the explanation immediately, but that was because she always regretted everything. And then, after the regret had flared and burned out, she didn't care. He should know, she thought. She wanted him to know. She felt something for somebody, and she'd told him.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“She had come out tonight because she believed there had to be a present tense, somewhere, and she'd followed Gav and Barnesy because she'd hoped they knew where it was. Is. And they'd dragged her to yet another haunted house. Where was the now? In bloody America, probably, apart from the bit that Tucker lived in, or in bloody Tokyo. In any case, it was somewhere else. How could people who didn't live in bloody America or bloody Tokyo stand it, all that swimming around in the past imperfect?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
Nick Hornby
Born place: in Redhill, Surrey, England, The United Kingdom
Born date April 17, 1957
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“When we get closer, he pushes out both of the chairs across from him. He nods at them and says, “Take a seat.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Am I going to have to woo you before I get my slice?”
He smiles over the pizza that he’s about to bite into. “Yeah, I do believe you’re going to have to.”
With zero self-respect, Amanda takes a seat and says, “That’s no problem with me.”
Honestly. Does she not know how to avoid showing all her cards at once?
When I take a seat, he holds out his hand. “I’m Aaron.”
I take his hand and notice how rough it is. It’s a working hand, one that experiences strenuous hours on the jobsite, day in, day out. “Amelia, and this is my friend, Amanda.”
Aaron nods at Amanda. “Nice to meet you.”
“Pleasure is mine and just so you know, Amelia is single and definitely on the market. Want me to give you her number?”
“Amanda, what the hell are you—?”
“I would love it,” Aaron says, leaning back in his chair while sipping his drink.
Slowly turning toward him, a little stunned, I ask, “You would?”
He nods with all the confidence in the world. “I would.”
“But you don’t know me. I could be a shovel-wielding rabbit killer.”
He leans forward, his chest flexing under his shirt with the movement. “I’ll take my chances.”
Now feeling a little skeptical, I fold my arms over my chest and ask, “Why do you want it?”
He bites down on his straw and studies me for a second before saying, “Can’t let a girl walk out the door without getting her number who’s that passionate about Buffalo chicken pizza. It’s just not physically possible.”
“Aw, he likes you for your crazy; he’s a keeper,” Amanda chimes in with her mouth full of pizza. “It’s 607—”
“Amanda, just be quiet for a second.” Looking at Aaron, I say, “Three Buffalo chicken pizza slices in exchange for three veggie and my phone number.”
“No way.” He shakes his head. “You can’t take all my Buffalo.”
“But I thought you wanted my number.”
“I do.” He leans forward some more, his fresh scent hitting me hard in the chest. “But we both know if I give you three slices, you will have zero respect for me because no man in his right mind would give up three Buffalo slices. No matter how hot the chick is.” Eeep, he thinks I’m hot. “But I will counter you with one and a half slices and a number.”
I sit back now, watching how his smile starts to spread. God, he’s just so . . . yum. He looks like he’s quite a few years older than me. Not just because of his face, but there is something in his eyes that makes him seem older. He’s definitely not in his second year of college like me. Not wanting to fold so quickly, I counter. “Two slices, my number, and a guaranteed date this Friday.”
He sits back, his eyes widen, and that smile gets even bigger. “Fucking deal.” He holds his hand out and we shake.”
― Meghan Quinn, quote from The Other Brother
“All landowners who were foolish enough to stick around were shot. Communists see people only in simple categories.”
― Min Jin Lee, quote from Pachinko
“Actually, it’s kind of a love story.”
― Ruth Emmie Lang, quote from Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
“Order, the Bowery, the city itself. It was all the same to Harte. Each one was holding him down, holding him back. He’d throw them off one by one, until he was free, or he’d die trying.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“I will say that the cross of materialism is that it never quite succeeds in believing what it preaches, in thinking its own thought. This may sound complicated, but is in fact simple: the materialist says, for example, that we are not free, though he is convinced, of course, that he asserts this freely, that no one is forcing him to state this view of the matter — neither parents, not social milieu, nor biological inheritance. He says that we are wholly determined by our history, but he never stops urging us to free ourselves, to change our destiny, to revolt where possible! He says that we must love the world as it is, turning our backs on past and future so as to live in the present, but he never stops trying, like you or me, when the present weighs upon us, to change it in hope of a better world. In brief, the materialist sets forth philosophical these that are profound, but always for you and me, never for himself. Always, he reintroduces transcendence — liberty, a vision for society, the ideal — because in truth he cannot not believe himself to be free, and therefore answerable to values higher than nature and history.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living
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