The artistic temperament is particularly unhelpful if it is just that, with no end product.
Nick HornbyThat is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself.
Nick HornbyI have always been accused of taking the things I love โ football, of course, but also books and records โ much too seriously, and I do feel a kind of anger when I hear a bad record, or when someone is lukewarm about a book that means a lot to me. Perhaps it was these desperate, bitter men in the West Stand at Arsenal who taught me how to get angry in this way; and perhaps it is why I earn some of my living as a critic โ maybe itโs those voices I can hear when I write. โYouโre a WANKER, X.โ โThe Booker Prize? THE BOOKER PRIZE? They should give that to me for having to read you.
Nick Hornby