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"I don't mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way--characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don't fit, the whole works--is simply asking too much of a reader. Something happening in a phony way must beat nothing happening in a phony way every time, right? I mean, you could prove that, mathematically, in an equation, and you can't often apply science to literature."
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"Embrace your weirdness. Some will adore you. Others won't. But who cares? Worry about loving yourself, not loving the idea of other people loving you."

"Be loved for who you are, for everything that constitutes you. Be loved for your core beliefs, your strengths and weaknesses, your admirable traits and troublesome baggage. Be loved for you, because anything less is not love at all."

"When there is a true or useful thing, there is sure to be a counterfeit."

"You don't need to be perfect, just be yourself."

"A human should realize himself and be responsible for himself if he wants to become the true person he is to be."

"A beautiful face cannot hide an ugly heart for long."

"Originality is the death of mediocrity."

"To be ordinary, be normal; to be original, be different; to be valuable, be unique; to be priceless, be yourself."

"When we overemphasise miracles, we compromise the gospel we were asked to preach."

"Do what is best for you--no matter what others think."
Explore more quotes by Nick Hornby

"A middle-aged woman who looked like someone's cleaning lady, a shrieking adolescent lunatic and a talkshow host with an orange face... It didn't add up. Suicide wasn't invented for people like this. It was invented for people like Virginia Woolf and Nick Drake. And Me. Suicide was supposed to be cool."

"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."

"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."

"But I want to see Clara, Charlie's friend, who's right up my street. I want to see her because I don't know where my street is; I don't even know which part of town it's in, which city, which country, so maybe she'll enable me to get my bearings."

"When someone uses the phrase 'the prick one', and you know immediately that this is a synonym for the word 'metaphorically', you are entitled to wonder whether you know the speaker too well. You are even entitled to wonder whether you should know her at all."

"Jess thought for a moment. 'You know those films where people fight up the top of the Empire State Building or up a mountain or whatever? And there's always that bit when the baddie slips off and the hero tries to save him, but, like, the sleeve of this jacket tears off and goes over and you hear him all the way down. Aaaaaaaaagh. That's what I want to do.' 'You want to watch me plunge to my doom.' 'I'd like to know that I've made the effort. I want to show people the torn sleeve."

"I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it."

"I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey."

"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."

"Contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century."
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