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Definitely Avoid Going Out With Ugly Girls Who Say They Want To Be Models. Not Because They're Ugly, But Because They're Mad".
-Nick Hornby
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Definitely Avoid Going Out

Nick Hornby
...
Definitely Avoid Going Out With Ugly Girls Who Say They Want To Be Models. Not Because They're Ugly, But Because They're Mad".

Understanding the Quote: "definitely avoid going out with ugly girls who say they want to..."

This quote by Nick Hornby reflects deeply on the theme of girl. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Girl, Mad, Ugly, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Nick Hornby interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby is celebrated for insightful thoughts on girl and mad. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Girl
Mad
Ugly
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People Worry About Kids Playing With Guns, And Teenagers Watching Violent Videos; We Are Scared That Some Sort Of Culture Of Violence Will Take Them Over. Nobody Worries About Kids Listening To Thousands - Literally Thousands - Of Songs About Broken Hearts And Rejection And Pain And Misery And Loss.
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I'd Stay There, Or Not, And I'd Eat, Or Not, And I'd Drink, Or Not, And Go Home, Or Not, And What I Did Or Didn't Do Wouldn't Matter To Anyone At All. And I Walked For Most Of The Day. Do People Get Sad On Holiday Sometimes? I Can Imagine They Do, Having All That Time To Think.
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We Have One Of Those Conversations Where Every Thing Clicks, Meshes, Corresponds, Locks, Where Even Our Pauses, Even Our Punctuation Marks, Seem To Be Nodding In Agreement.
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Every Time People Force Themselves To Carry On With A Book They're Not Enjoying, They Reinforce The Idea That Reading Is A Duty.
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[about Suicide] And Why Is It The Biggest Sin Of All? All Your Life You're Told That You'll Be Going To This Marvellous Place When You Pass On. And The One Thing You Can Do To Get You There A Bit Quicker Is Something That Stops You Getting There At All. Oh, I Can See That It's A Kind Of Queue­jumping. But If Someone Jumps The Queue At The Post Office, People Tut. Or Sometimes They Say, “excuse Me, I Was Here First.” They Don't Say, “you Will Be Consumed By Hellfire For All Eternity.” That Would Be A Bit Strong.
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Way
Force
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People
Life Is
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Book
People
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Trying
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Just Because It's A Relationship, And It's Based On Soppy Stuff, It Doesn't Mean You Can't Make Intellectual Decisions About It. Sometimes You Just Have To, Otherwise You'll Never Get Anywhere. That's Where I've Been Going Wrong. I've Been Letting The Weather And My Stomach Muscles And A Great Chord Change In A Pretenders Single Make Up My Mind For Me, And I Want To Do It For Myself.
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Expression
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Spit
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Fear
Night
Thinking
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Wife
My Wife
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Ties
Long
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Pride
World
Arguing
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Long
People
Black
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Reading
Circles
Space
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Football
Book
Writing
But The Internet Had Changed Everything: Nobody Was Forgotten Anymore.
Internet
Forgotten
Changed
I'm Not Telling You That Suicidal People Aren't So Far Away From People Who Can Get By; I'm Telling You That People Who Can Get By Aren't So Far Away From Being Suicidal.
Suicidal
People
Far Away
What You Don't Catch A Glimpse Of On Your Wedding Day- Because How Could You?- Is That Some Days You Will Hate Your Spouse, That You Will Look At Him And Regret Ever Exhchanging A Word With Him, Let Alone A Ring And Bodily Fluids.
Regret
Hate
Glimpse
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Relationship
Boyfriend
Husband
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Stories
Happens
It's A Mystery Of Human Chemistry And I Don't Understand It, Some People, As Far As Their Senses Are Concerned, Just Feel Like Home.
Home
People
Chemistry
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Hopeful
Way
Sentimental
The Kind Of Love My Mum Talks About Is Full Of Worry And Work And Forgiving People And Putting Up With Things And Stuff Like That. It's Not A Lot Of Fun, That's For Sure. If That Really Is Love, The Kind My Mum Talks About, Then Nobody Can Ever Know If They Love Somebody, Can They? It Seems Like What She's Saying Is, If You're Pretty Sure You Love Somebody, The Way I Was Sure In Those Few Weeks, Then You Can't Love Them, Because That Isn't What Love Is. Trying To Understand What She Means By Love Would Do Your Head In.
Love
Fun
Mean
It's Brilliant, Being Depressed; You Can Behave As Badly As You Like.
Depression
Brilliant
Being Depressed
Everyone Knows How To Talk, And No One Knows What To Say.
Long Way Down
Know How
Knows
It's No Wonder We're All Such A Mess, Is It? We're Like Tom Hanks In Big. Little Boys And Girls Trapped In Adult Bodies And Forced To Get On With It.
Girl
Boys
Adults
It Was Hopeless, Life, Really. It Was Set Up All Wrong.
Hopeless
Hey, Great Idea: If You Have Kids, Give Your Partner Reading Vouchers Next Christmas. Each Voucher Entitles The Bearer To Two Hours' Reading Time *while The Kids Are Awake*. It Might Look Like A Cheapskate Present, But Parents Will Appreciate That It Costs More In Real Terms Than A Lamborghini.
Christmas
Real
Reading
Clockers" Asks--almost In Passing, And There's A Lot More To It Than This--a Pretty Interesting Question: If You Choose To Work For The Minimum Wage When Everyone Around You Is Pocketing Thousands From Drug Deals, Then What Does That Do To You, To Your Head And To Your Heart? (hornby's Thoughts After Reading "clockers" By Richard Price)
Reading
Heart
Interesting
So Now What? What Happens When Words Fail Us?
Failing
Happens
On New Year's Eve He Ould Make A Resolution To Recover Some His Previous Scepticism, But Until Then He Would Do As The Romans Do, And Smile At People Even If He Disapproved Of Them
New Year
Years
People
Human Beings Are Millions Of Things In One Day.
One Day
Humans
Millions
One Day, Maybe Not In The Next Few Weeks, But Certainly In The Conceivable Future, Someone Will Be Able To Refer To Me Without Using The Word 'arse' Somewhere In The Sentence.
One Day
Arses
Able
I Can See That Now. I Can See Everything Once It’s Already Happened — I’m Very Good At The Past. It’s The Present I Can’t Understand.
Past
Very Good
Happened
I'd Like My Life To Be Like A Bruce Springsteen Song. Just Once. I Know I'm Not Born To Run, I Know That Seven Sisters' Road Is Nothing Like Thunder Road, But Feelings Can't Be Different, Can They?
Running
Song
Feelings
...you Can Find People. It's Like Those Acrobatic Displays.... Those Ones When You Stand On Top Of Loads Of People In A Pyramid. It Doesn't Really Matter Who They Are, As Long As They're There And You Don't Let Them Go Away Without Finding Someone Else.
Pyramids
Long
People
It's Music Rage, Which Is Like Road Rage, Only More Righteous. When You Get Road Rage, A Tiny Part Of You Knows You're Being A Jerk, But When You Get Music Rage, You're Carrying Out The Will Of God, And God Wants These People Dead.
People
Tiny
Want
We Were Little Animals, Which Is Not To Imply That By The End Of The Week We Were Tearing Our Tank Tops Off; Just That, Metaphorically Speaking, We Had Begun To Sniff Each Other's Bottoms, And We Did Not Find The Odor Entirely Repellent.
Animal
Tanks
Odor
I Fell In Love With Football As I Was Later To Fall In Love With Women: Suddenly, Inexplicably, Uncritically, Giving No Thought To The Pain Or Disruption It Would Bring With It.
Football
Falling In Love
Pain
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.
Life
Happiness
Knives
The Unhappiest People I Know, Romantically Speaking, Are The Ones Who Like Pop Music The Most; And I Don't Know Whether Pop Music Has Caused This Unhappiness, But I Do Know That They've Been Listening To The Sad Songs Longer Than They've Been Living The Unhappy Lives.
Song
People
Listening
My Own Feeling About Jj, Without Knowing Anything About Him, Was That He Might Have Been A Gay Person, Because He Had Long Hair And Spoke American. A Lot Of Americans Are Gay People, Aren’t They? I Know They Didn’t Invent Gayness, Because They Say That Was The Greeks. But They Helped Bring It Back Into Fashion. Being Gay Was A Bit Like The Olympics: It Disappeared In Ancient Times, And Then They Brought It Back In The Twentieth Century. Anyway, I Didn’t Know Anything About Gays, So I Just Presumed They Were All Unhappy And Wanted To Kill Themselves.
Fashion
Gay
Hair
That 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.
Book
Heart
Optimism
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.
Suicide
Virginia
Orange
No Man Is An Island.
Men
Islands
The Trouble With History Is That There Are Too Many People Involved
People
Trouble
Involved
What Went Wrong? Nothing And Everything.
But I Suspect That All Writers Come Up With Premises Of Some Kind, Fragments Of Narrative Or Scenarios, In The Course Of A Working Week.
Narrative
Kind
Week
I Have Always Been Accused Of Taking The Things I Love - Football, Of Course, But Also Books And Records - 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.
Football
Book
Mean
Phone Calls Like Ours Only Happen When You've Spent Several Years Hurting And Being Hurt, Until Every Work You Utter Or Hear Becomes Coded And Loaded, As Complicated And Full Of Subtext As A Bleak And Brilliant Play.
Hurt
Phones
Years
(about Organizing Books In His Home Library, And Putting A Book In The "arts And Lit Non-fiction Section) I Personally Find That For Domestic Purposes, The Trivial Pursuit System Works Better Than Dewey.
Art
Book
Home
[h]ow Was I Supposed To Get Excited About The Oppression Of Females If They Couldn't Be Trusted To Stay Upright During The Final Minutes Of A Desperately Close Promotion Campaign?
Soccer
Female
Finals
Life Isn't, And Has Never Been, A 2-0 Home Victory After A Fish And Chip Lunch.
Home
Lunch
Victory
I Couldn’t Bear To Think About The Proper Future, So I Just Tried To Make Things Better For The Next Twenty Minutes Or So, Over And Over Again.
Life
Thinking
Twenties
I Hate Time. It Never Does What You Want It To.
Hate
Doe
Want
You're Not Allowed To Say Anything About Books Because They're Books, And Books Are, You Know, God.
Book
Say Anything
Knowing God
We Spent All Those Years Talking About Stuff We Had In Common, And The Last Few Months Noticing All The Ways We Were Different And It Broke Both Of Our Hearts.
Heart
Talking
Years
...self-consciousness Is A Man's Worst Enemy.
Men
Worst Enemy
Self
All I Know Is That You Can Get Very Little From A Book That Is Making You Weep With The Effort Of Reading It. You Won’t Remember It, And You’ll Learn Nothing From It, And You’ll Be Less Likely To Choose A Book Over Big Brother Next Time You Have A Choice.
Brother
Book
Reading
You Wouldn't Believe That So Much Could Change Just Because A Relationship Ended.
Believe
One Thing About Great Art: It Made You Love People More, Forgive Them Their Petty Transgressions. It Worked In The Way That Religion Was Supposed To, If You Thought About It.
Art
People
Forgiving
I'm Still Not A Very Good White Wine, But I'm Drinkable - You Could Put Me In A Punch, Anyway.
Wine
White
Very Good
There's No Doubt That He's The Biggest Sports Star In The World Now. (on David Beckham)
Sports
Stars
Doubt
Radio Football Is Football Reduced To Its Lowest Common Denominator.
Football
Radio
Common
All The Books We Own, Both Read And Unread, Are The Fullest Expression Of Self We Have At Our Disposal. ... But With Each Passing Year, And With Each Whimsical Purchase, Our Libraries Become More And More Able To Articulate Who We Are, Whether We Read The Books Or Not.
Book
Self
Expression
Where's The Superficial? I Was, And Therefore Am, Dim, Gloomy, A Drag, Unfashionable, Unfanciable, And Awkward. This Doesn't Seem Like Superficial To Me. These Aren't Flesh Wounds. These Are Life-threatening Thrusts Into The Internal Organs.
Awkward
Flesh
Threatening
I Had To Nurture Those Doubts As If They Were Tiny, Sickly Kittens, Until Eventually They Became Sturdy, Healthy Grievances, With Their Own Cat Doors, Which Allowed Them To Wander In And Out Of Our Conversation At Will.
Cat
Doors
Healthy
Women Who Disapprove Of Men - And There's Plenty To Disapprove Of - Should Remember How We Started Out, And How Far We Had To Travel.
Men
Remember
Should
It Takes A Child To Say The Unsayable.
Children
Maybe The Best Thing To Do With Favorite Books Is To Leave Them Be: To Achieve Such Exalted Position Means That They Entered Your Life At Exactly The Right Time, In Precisely The Right Place, And Those Conditions Can Never Be Recreated.
Book
Mean
Achieve
You Spend Christmas At Somebody's House, You Worry About Their Operations, You Give Them Hugs And Kisses And Flowers, You See Them In Their Dressing Gown...and Then Bang, That's It. Gone Forever. And Sooner Or Later There Will Be Another Mum, Another Christmas, More Varicose Veins. They're All The Same. Only The Addresses, And The Colors Of The Dressing Gown, Change.
Flower
Kissing
Color
I Used To Believe, Although I Don't Now, That Growing And Growing Up Are Analogous, That Both Are Inevitable And Uncontrollable Processes. Now It Seems To Me That Growing Up Is Governed By The Will, That One Can Choose To Become An Adult, But Only At Given Moments. These Moments Come Along Fairly Infrequently -during Crises In Relationships, For Example, Or When One Has Been Given The Chance To Start Afresh Somewhere- And One Can Ignore Them Or Seize Them.
Growing Up
Believe
Adults
We All Spend So Much Time Not Saying What We Want, Because We Know We Can't Have It. And Because It Sounds Ungracious, Or Ungrateful, Or Disloyal, Or Childish, Or Banal. Or Because We're So Desperate To Pretend That Things Are Ok, Really, That Confessing To Ourselves They're Not Looks Like A Bad Move. Go On, Say What You Want. ... Whatever It Is, Say It To Yourself. The Truth Will Set You Free. Either That Or It'll Get You A Punch In The Nose. Surviving In Whatever Life You're Living Means Lying, And Lying Corrodes The Soul, So Take A Break From The Lies For Just One Minute.
Lying
Moving
Mean
I Don't Think You Can Call It Stalking When It's Just Phone Calls And Letters And Emails And Knocking On The Door.
Thinking
Phones
Doors
I Suddenly Had A Little Epiphany: All The Books We Own, Both Read And Unread, Are The Fullest Expression Of Self We Have At Our Disposal.
Book
Self
Expression
The Truth About Life Was That Nothing Ever Ended Until You Died, And Even Then You Just Left A Whole Bunch Of Unresolved Narratives Behind You.
Narrative
Behind You
Bunch
What Came First – The Music Or The Misery? Did I Listen To The Music Because I Was Miserable? Or Was I Miserable Because I Listened To The Music? Do All Those Records Turn You Into A Melancholy Person?
Music
Records
Firsts
It Is A Strange Paradox That While The Grief Of Football Fans(and It Is Real Grief) Is Private - We Each Have An Individual Relationship With Our Clubs, And I Think That We Are Secretly Convinced That None Of The Other Fans Understands Quite Why We Have Been Harder Hit Than Anyone Else - We Are Forced To Mourn In Public, Surrounded By People Whose Hurt Is Expressed In Forms Different From Our Own.
Football
Hurt
Real
When It Came Down To It, He Just Wasn't That Engaged. You Had To Be Engaged To Be A Vegetarian; You Had To Be Engaged To Sing "both Sides Now" With Your Eyes Closed; When It Came Down To It, You Had To Be Engaged To Be A Mother.
Mother
Eye
Sides
And It Isn't That I'm So Unhappy I Don't Want To Live Anymore. That's Not What It Feels Like. It Feels More Like I'm Tired And Bored And The Party's Gone On Too Long And I Want To Go Home. I Feel Flat And There Doesn't Seem To Be Anything To Look Forward To, So I'd Rather Call It A Day.
Party
Home
Tired
For Alarmingly Large Chunks Of An Average Day, I Am A Moron.
Average
Fever Pitch
Moron
You Know That Things Aren't Going Well For You When You Can't Even Tell People The Simplest Fact About Your Life, Just Because They'll Presume You're Asking Them To Feel Sorry For You.
Sorry
People
Asking
The Outward Manifestations Of An Inner Combustion Are Never Very Directed.
Manifestation
Combustion
I'm A Good Person. In Most Ways. But I'm Beginning To Think That Being A Good Person In Most Ways Doesn't Count For Anything Very Much, If You're A Bad Person In One Way.
Thinking
Way
Good Person
I'm Human. That's How Humans Spend Their Time, Doing Shitty Things.
Humans
It's Just That Romance, With Its Dips And Turns And Glooms And Highs, Its Swoops And Swoons And Blues, Is A Natural Metaphor For Music Itself
Romance
Dip
Metaphor
[...] Falling In Love With Someone Beautiful And Intelligent And The Rest Of It, Then Feeling Like A Blank Twit Put You At Something Of A Disadvantage.
Beautiful
Falling In Love
Intelligent
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.
Book
Ideas
Clubs
I Was Still Owed An Explanation, I Thought, But So What? What Good Was It Going To Do Me? It Wouldn't Have Made Me Any Happier. It Was Like Scratching When You Have Chicken Pox. You Think It's Going To Help, But The Itch Moves Over, And Then Moves Over Again. My Itch Suddenly Felt Miles Away, And I Couldn't Have Reached It With The Longest Arms In The World. Realizing That Made Me Scared That I Was Going To Be Itchy Forever, And I Didn't Want That.
Moving
Thinking
Forever
...i Feel As Though I Made A Face And The Wind Changed, And Now I Have To Go Through Life Grimacing In This Horrible Way.
Wind
Way
Faces
You Need As Much Ballast As Possible To Stop You From Floating Away; You Need People Around You, Things Going On, Otherwise Life Is Like Some Film Where The Money Ran Out, And There Are No Sets, Or Locations, Or Supporting Actors, And It's Just One Bloke On His Own Staring Into The Camera With Nothing To Do And Nobody To Speak To, And Who'd Believe In This Character Then?
Believe
Character
People
Radio Football Is Football Reduced To Its Lowest Common Denominator. Shorn Of The Game's Aesthetic Pleasures, Or The Comfort Of A Crowd That Feels The Same Way As You, Or The Sense Of Security That You Get When You See That Your Defenders And Goalkeeper Are More Or Less Where They Should Be, All That Is Left Is Naked Fear.
Sports
Football
Games
I Lost The Plot For A While Then. And I Lost The Subplot, The Script, The Soundtrack, The Intermission, My Popcorn, The Credits, And The Exit Sign.
Plot
Popcorn
Credit
There Are Many Differences Between A Baby And An I-pod. And One Of The Biggest Is, No Ones Going To Mug You For Your Baby.
Baby
Differences
Mug
There Had Been Times When He Knew, Somewhere In Him, That He Would Get Used To It, Whatever It Was, Because He Had Learnt That Some Hard Things Became Softer After A Very Little While.
Life
Littles
Used
Everyone Disliked Their Partners At Some Time Or Another, She Knew That. But She’d Spent Her Hours In The Dark Wondering Whether She’d Ever Liked Him. Would It Really Have Been So Much Worse To Spend Those Years Alone? Why Did There Have To Be Someone Else In The Room While She Was Eating, Watching Tv, Sleeping?
Sleep
Dark
Years
Did I Do And Say These Things? Yes, I Did. Are There Any Mitigating Circumstances? Not Really, Unless Any Circumstances {in Other Words, Context) Can Be Regarded As Mitigating. And Before You Judge, Although You Have Probably Already Done So, Go Away And Write Down The Four Worst Things You Have Done To A Partner, Even If - Especially If - Your Partner Doesn't Know About Them. Don't Dress Things Up, Or Try To Explain Them; Just Write Them Down, In A List, In The Plainest Language Possible. Finished? Ok, So Who's The Arsehole Now?
Writing
Judging
Going Away
Surely We All Occasionally Buy Books Because Of A Daydream We're Having - A Little Fantasy About The People We Might Turn Into One Day, When Our Lives Are Different, Quieter, More Introspective, And When All The Urgent Reading, Whatever That Might Be, Has Been Done. We Never Arrive At That Point, Needless To Say.
Book
Reading
People
It's Just That None Of Us Had The Wit Or Talent To Make Them Into Songs. We Made Them Into Life, Which Much Messier, And More Time Consuming, And Leaves Nothing For Anybody To Whistle.
Song
Talent
Made
You Have To Work At Relationships. You Can’t Just Walk Out On Them Every Time Something Goes Wrong.
Walks
I Guess I Should Have Forgotten About It Ages Ago, But Forgetting Isn't Something I'm Very Good At.
Should Have
Age
Forget
Indeed, There Is A Moment On The First Cd - The Electrifying Opening To "i Got Loaded," Which Sounds Like An R&b Standard But Isn't - When You Might Find Yourself Asking Whether Anyone Who Has Ever Been Smitten By Pop Music Can Fail To Have His Heart Stopped By The Chords, The Swing, And, Once Again, Steve Berlin's Wonderfully Greasy Sax.
Heart
Swings
Cds
Did You Know That Jacques Benveniste, One Of The World's Leading Homeopathic 'scientists', Now Claims That You Can Email Homeopathic Remedies? Yeah, See, What You Do Is You Can Take The 'memory' Of The Diluted Substance Out Of The Water Electromagnetically, Put It On Your Computer, Email It, And Play It Back On A Sound Card Into New Water. I Mean, That Could Work, Right?
Memories
Mean
Play
Like All Books That Have That Kind Of Momentum, It Starts From Word Of Mouth.
Book
Momentum
Mouths
Over The Last Couple Of Years, The Photos Of Me When I Was A Kid... Well, They've Started To Give Me A Little Pang Or Something - Not Unhappiness, Exactly, But Some Kind Of Quiet, Deep Regret... I Keep Wanting To Apologize To The Little Guy: "i'm Sorry, I've Let You Down. I Was The Person Who Was Supposed To Look After You, But I Blew It: I Made Wrong Decisions At Bad Times, And I Turned You Into Me.
Sorry
Couple
Regret
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