top of page
"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."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Authenticity quotes

"Don't ever be afraid to show who you really are, because as long as you are happy with yourself, no one else's opinion matters."

"Nothing could be more wrong than the old cliche that says any religion will do just as long as one is sincere. In no other area of life is there so much error, deception, and charlatanism as in religion."

"Well, it all comes to this, there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to live in our own."

"We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained."

"There's nothing more beautiful than authenticity. There's nothing stronger than vulnerability. There's no better time than now."

"Authenticity isn't just about saying "this is who I am-it is also about being flexible enough to recognize and appreciate the uniqueness in others-honoring the mutual respect for being authentic and true."

"To be "great" is an ego goal; to be real is existential."

"Originality is the death of mediocrity."

"Who are you not to be yourself?"

"When I meet someone who is truly genuine, I am drawn to their personality and find them easier to approach, engage, and interact with. They have no hint of false pretense, nor do I worry about hidden agendas."
Explore more quotes by Nick Hornby

"We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?"

"There were only seven years between the first and last Beatles albums. That's nothing, seven years, when you think of how their hairstyles changed and their music changed. Some bands now go seven years without hardly bothering to do anything."

"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."

"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."

"Sometimes you know you've got a chance with a girl because she wants to fight with you. If the world wasn't so messed up, it wouldn't be like that. If the world was normal, a girl being nice to you would be a good sign, but in the real world, it isn't."

"And another way of explaining it is to say that shit happens, and there's no space too small, too dark and airless and fucking hopeless, for people to crawl into."

"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."

"A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners."

"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."
bottom of page