“I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.”

—  Nick Hornby , book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand." by Nick Hornby?
Nick Hornby photo
Nick Hornby 110
English novelist 1957

Related quotes

Marc Bloch photo

“Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present…This faculty of understanding the living is, in very truth, the master quality of the historian.”

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) French historian, medievalist, and historiographer

The Historian's Craft, pg.43

Fernando Pessoa photo

“I always live in the present. The future I can't know. The past I no longer have.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 118
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Vivo sempre no presente. O futuro, não o conheço. O passado, já o não tenho.

Carl Sagan photo

“You have to know the past to understand the present.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Mike Tyson photo

“I'm not a good father. I'm a good man with my kids. I'm very generous with them. I'm very kind to them, but I am not a good father.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

On his family
Source: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=2083509&type=story

“The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.”

A.J.P. Taylor (1906–1990) Historian

Mon the Rangers
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)

Colette photo

“I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.”

Colette Chéri

Source: La Fin de Chéri (The Last of Cheri) (1926)

Terry Eagleton photo

“The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Chapter 2, p. 62

Paulo Coelho photo

“Because I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present".”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

“We go to the past to lay the blame - since the past can't argue. We go to our past selves to account for our present miseries.”

Glen Duncan (1965) British writer

Source: Love Remains

Whoopi Goldberg photo

“I'm an actor. That's what I do. I'm not a stand-up comic. I do characters. I'm very good. I'll be better. But right now I'm a very good actor.”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

As quoted in "Whoopi Goldberg, A One-Woman Character Parade" https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=68252476 by Michael Kuchwara, AP Drama Writer, The Fremont News-Messenger (November 29, 1984), p. 31.

Related topics