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" 'An Education' was a complicated piece of work because it came from a tiny essay, so it took me a while to find the story I wanted to tell and the characters I wanted to tell it about. That really only emerged after four or five drafts. "

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" Dylan's 'Chronicles' is easily the best rock n' roll memoir ever written, as far as I'm concerned. There aren't many stories in there, but if you want to know where an artist came from and why he thinks the way he does, then that's the one. "

Nick Hornby

Best

Artist

Know

" With 'Brooklyn,' I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I just had a very strong sense that if I turned the volume up a little bit, it could be something really special. "

" I think I became less literary after I sold more! "

Nick Hornby

Literary

I Think

" Why are we scared of a '50s weepie? Why are we scared of a movie that pulls you in and punches you in the stomach? "

" I always thought 'Of Mice and Men' was such a perfect book because there's nothing not to understand, but it's still really clever and moving and complicated, but everybody understands the complication. "

" Screenwriting is about condensing. "

Nick Hornby

Screenwriting

About

" I love the detail about the workings of the human heart and mind that only fiction can provide - film can't get in close enough. "

" Radio football is football reduced to its lowest common denominator. "

" If you can get every kid to have found a book that he or she loves, then you've done a great job. "

" You can't really ask for anything more than to be working for your entire life - and to be doing something that some people respond to. "

" It's a great relief that you're not as bad a parent as you thought you were. "

" Studying English was useless, completely useless. It took me years to recover from that. Every time I tried to write, it sounded like a bad university essay. "

" The most important thing for me is realism. I don't like writing which does somersaults on the page, and I'm no great fan of the hard work literary novel. "

Nick Hornby

Writing

Work

" I wasted the 1980s. I wasted every minute at Cambridge talking to people who knew more about music than I did. "

Nick Hornby

Talking

People

" Football really felt like a private thing when I was in my teens because it wasn't on television, for a start, apart from 'Match of the Day.' "

" The Oscars are like a political campaign. You have to have the right candidates, and the people in Hollywood know what they are. "

" I always naturally want to change things up if I possibly can. I never want to write a sequel to a book. I don't want to go back over things. I don't want to adapt my own books for the screen. That's something that's important to me, the keeping it fresh. "

" I like writing about popular culture. It helps to place people. I think you can be really, really accurate if you know enough about it, and place people precisely. "

" I'm quite gloomy. I just am one of those people, vaguely lugubrious. "

" Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways. "

" The writing in those HBO dramas, like 'The Wire,' is as good as anything I've seen. "

" We don't feel duty-bound to get all the way through a TV program. If we're not enjoying it, we turn over. Movies, we tend to give more of the benefit of the doubt because they're only 90 minutes or two hours. But books, there is this thing of, 'It's a book. I've got to finish it.' "

" I think firmly that art is no use to anyone unless it offers some kind of consolation or hope. "

" I'm really not a big rereader - I'm too aware of my own ignorance. "

" I applied for a job on 'Melody Maker' once. "

" If you're 22 and got everything you want, what are you going to write about for the rest of your life? "

" Joni Mitchell's someone who has tried to make sense of her own world, sometimes painfully, through song. "

" There's music every day. I don't think I could write without it. Not that I listen while I'm writing. It's more hearing a piece of music that I want to somehow convert into prose, as a creative inspiration. "

" The Internet's changed everything. There are no record stores to hang out in anymore. "

" I don't want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them! "