Nick Hornby Quotes

I've got two wonderful children - and two out of five isn't too bad.

You learn a lot though when you have kids, I'll tell you what. Did you know when a baby poops its diapers, you're not supposed to hit him with a rolled-up newspaper?

I was the youngest of the six kids, and to make my older siblings laugh, that was very important. I did a great impression of our dad that made them all laugh, so that gave me a lot of power within the family.

There are so many common occurrences in raising children that people just can't seem to figure out.

Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.

If you're a parent, the five worst words you can say to your children are, "When I was your age ..." You were never their age. You were older in the womb.

"What is the greatest mistake a parent can make?" she asked. "To believe that your children will be just like you."

Kids haven't changed much, but parents seem increasingly unhappy with the child raising phase of their lives.

I was very strict on that point. No devouring classmates." Jeremy rolled his eyes. "Other parents warn their kids not to talk to strangers. I had to warn mine not to eat them.

If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.

I firmly believe kids don't want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you're in big trouble.

I would tell people some years later that I was raised an only child and so was my brother.

Eventually we will learn that the loss of indivisible love is another of our necessary losses, that loving extends beyond the mother-child pair, that most of the love we receive in this world is love we will have to share--and that sharing begins at home, with our sibling rivals.

My mom let me kind of run free and be rowdy. She encouraged it. I'm a youngest child. So I was spazzy and trying to be funny to my older sisters. It's kind of my role in the family - tension reliever. I was funny or annoying, depending on your perspective.

I’ve noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.

I think part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids.

But the three siblings were not born yesterday. Violet was born more than fifteen years before this particular Wednesday, and Klaus was born approximately two years after that, and even Sunny, who had just passed out of babyhood, was not born yesterday. Neither were you, unless of course I am wrong, in which case welcome to the world, little baby, and congratulations on learning to read so early in life.

My sister Wendy has a husband and two children, and they have a family photo on top of the VCR, where they're all looking slightly to the left. As though something is going on over there! I guess something happened over to the left that made everybody happy! Except my sister is cross-eyed, so she can't quite pull it off. One eye is right-on.

I expect that [trying to do the best] of my players today and of my kids. My wife says I shouldn't expect that of my children, but I don't think that's asking too much.

I was bullied by my siblings and cousins, so make-believe was a way in which I could be in charge. When I was like 10 and my sister was about five, I convinced her that she was going to jail because she used a bad word. The doorbell happened to ring, and I told her it was the police. I made her pack her bags. She was crying, and then I said to her, "I forgive you, and I'm gonna tell the cop to go away." Then, of course, she loved me. It was terrible - she still remembers it. I had a sordid sense of humor.

I see in my friends that don't have kids, when they come over, and the amount of times our conversation gets interrupted by my children. It's almost jarring.

When I knew I was going to be able to write full time, I wondered, "What's going to happen to the relationships within my family?" Are they going to change? Is it going to be the kind of deal where you say, "I can't take this! Get me out of here! I can't stand these screaming kids!" The way it turned out was, I was able to change the diapers okay, after I stuck the pin through my fingers a few times. I had a dawning realization that children are not particularly hard to deal with.

I saw a sign that said, 'Watch for children.' I was like, 'That sounds like a fair trade - especially if they're crappy kids.'

Brothers and sisters should never be in the same family.