David Nicholls Quotes & Sayings

realist works I look for detail; 'Look at the eyelashes! — David Nicholls

Maybe if you listen to Radio 4 enough from an early age, you just get educated subliminally — David Nicholls

No matter how predictable, banal and listless the rest of my life might be, you can guarantee that there'll always be something interesting going on with my skin. — David Nicholls

But how can you not like music? That's the same as not liking food! Or sex! — David Nicholls

Josh likes to say he put the funk in 'functional'. Personally I think he just put the ass in 'embarrassing', but, hey, what do I know? — David Nicholls

So they were pen pals now, Emma composing long, intense letters crammed with jokes and underlining, forced banter and barely concealed longing; two-thousand-word acts of love on air-mail paper. Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them. In return, Dexter sent her postcards with insufficient postage: 'Amsterdam is MAD', 'Barcelona INSANE', 'Dublin ROCKS. Sick as DOG this morning.' As a travel writer, he was no Bruce Chatwin, but still she would slip the postcards in the pocket of a heavy coat on long soulful walks on Ilkley Moor, searching for some hidden meaning in 'VENICE COMPLETELY FLOODED!!!! — David Nicholls

Well, in the first flush of love, if someone tells you to read something then you damn well read it [ ... ] — David Nicholls

In the future, I'll be braver, she told herself. In the future, I will always speak my mind, eloquently, passionately. — David Nicholls

Imagine staying awake all night not because you're worried about the future but because it's FUN — David Nicholls

As soon as she'd met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her. — David Nicholls

I would never complain about 'One Day' taking off, but it made me painfully self-conscious for a long time. — David Nicholls

In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn't thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right. — David Nicholls

Things should look right, Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary — David Nicholls

Alice doesn't seem to mind because she's laughing too, and biting her lip, all doe-eyed, and tossing her freshly washed hair, and Norton tosses his lovely, glossy hair back, and she tosses her hair in return, and he tosses his, and she tosses hers, and it;s like some mating ritual on a wildlife program. — David Nicholls

Why, I wondered, did people seek out portrayals of the very experiences that, in real life, would send them mad with despair? Shouldn't art be an escape, a laugh, a comfort, a thrill? — David Nicholls

And there it is again, the look. There's no doubt about it, if Sylvie had a receipt, she would have taken him back by now; this one's gone wrong. It's not what I wanted. — David Nicholls

An adaptation leads the cinema-goer to the original to find out what they're missing and if they already know the book, it can still illuminate a theme, a character, an idea. — David Nicholls

The early days of any relationship are punctuated with a series of firsts - first sight, first words, first laugh, first kiss, first nudity, etc., with these shared landmarks becoming more widely spaced and innocuous as days turn to years, until eventually you're left with first visit to a National Trust property or some such. — David Nicholls

Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary. — David Nicholls

... and you smile back and try not to think about the fact that you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other. — David Nicholls

She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things. — David Nicholls

I had made this mistake once before, on a school trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum, when I followed a sign marked WOMEN, thinking it was an exhibition on the changing roles of women in society, and actually ended up standing in the ladies' toilets. — David Nicholls

For the best part of my childhood I visited the local library three or four times a week, hunching in the stacks on a foam rubber stool and devouring children's fiction, classics, salacious thrillers, horror and sci-fi, books about cinema and origami and natural history, to the point where my parents encouraged me to read a little less. — David Nicholls

You can't throw away years of your life because it makes a funny anecdote. — David Nicholls

What if life had taken a different route? What is had preserved with those letters to publishers when she was twenty-two? Might it have been Emma, instead of Stephanie Shaw, eating Pret A Manger sandwiches in a pencil skirt? For some time now she has had conviction that life is about to change if only because it must, and perhaps this it, perhaps this meeting is the new start. — David Nicholls

You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you. — David Nicholls

Great deal of stress is placed on the importance of humour in the modern relationship. Everything will be all right, we are led to believe, as long as you can make each other laugh, rendering a successful marriage as, in effect, fifty years of improv. To someone who felt in need of fresh new material, as I did during that long, dehydrated night of the soul, this was a cause for concern. I had always enjoyed making Connie laugh, it was satisfying and reassuring because laughter, I suppose, — David Nicholls

How would she fill the days? She had no idea. The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at ... something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible. Eat sensibly. Stuff like that. — David Nicholls

Maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few jokes. — David Nicholls

And they did have fun, though it was of different kind now. All that yearning and passion had been replaced by a steady pulse of pleasure and satisfaction and occasional irritation, and this seemed to be a happy exchange; if there had been moments in her life when she had been more elated, there had never been a time when things had been more constant. — David Nicholls

I think what it is is, if you're in school and you're not that bright or good-looking or popular or whatever, and one day you say something and someone laughs, well, you sort of grab onto it, don't you? You think, well I run funny and I've got this stupid big face and big thighs and no-one fancies me, but at least I can make people laugh. And it's such a nice feeling, making someone laugh, that maybe you get a bit reliant on it. Like, if you;re not funny then you're not ... anything — David Nicholls

We can just hang out and walk and read and talk and stuff. — David Nicholls

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can't find the time, there are people who've never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous. — David Nicholls

I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think that's common among writers if they get cornered on something. — David Nicholls

If she does have a failing, and it's obviously only a tiny one, it's that she doesn't seem particularly curious about other people, or me, anyway. — David Nicholls

He hadn't been this nervous since the last disastrous night at the improv, and he firmly told himself to calm down as he blotted at the tablecloth, glancing upwards to see Emma wriggling out of her summer jacket, pushing her shoulders back and her chest forward in that way that women do without realising the ache they cause. — David Nicholls

You should visit the Palatine. It's at the top of that hill ... "
"I know where the Palatine is, Dexter, I was visiting Rome before you were born."
"Yes, who was emperor back then? — David Nicholls

At the end of the day, the harsh reality is that if you're a fan of Kate Bush, Charles Dickens, Scrabble, David Attenborough and University Challenge, then there's not much out there for you in terms of a youth movement. — David Nicholls

Over-familiar, the music has become a kind of audio-Valium, background music rather than something I listen to actively and attentively. A gin and tonic after a long day. A shame, I think, because while each note remains the same, I used to hear them differently. It used to sound better. — David Nicholls

That line again. For Ian, a joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hands like a cheap umbrella. — David Nicholls

Welcome to the graveyard of ambition — David Nicholls

You've got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it's unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it'll be a cyanide capsule. — David Nicholls

Travelling', she sighed.'So predictable.'
'What's wrong with travelling?'
'Avoiding reality more like.'
'I think reality is over-rated,' he said in the hope that this might come across as dark and charismatic. — David Nicholls

They ended up in a amusement arcade on Old Compton Street, where Nora insisted Stephen join her on one of those dance-step machines, and as he stood next to her, stomping out a dance routine on the illuminated dance floor, he had a sudden anxiety that Nora might be one of those kooky, free-spirit types, the kind of irreverent life-force who, in the imaginary romantic comedy currently playing in his head, turns the hero's narrow life upside down, etc., etc. The acid test for free-spirited kookiness is to show the subject a field of fresh snow; if they flop on their backs and make snow-angels, then the test is positive. In the absence of snow, Stephan resolved to keep an eye open for other tell-tale kookiness indicators: a propensity for wacky hats, zany mismatched socks, leaf-kicking, a disproportionate enthusiasm for karaoke, kite - flying and light-hearted shoplifting, the whole Holly Golightly act. — David Nicholls

Last night they had said and done all those things, and now they were like strangers in a bus queue. The mistake she had made was to fall asleep and break the spell. — David Nicholls

I love him, she thought. I'm just not in love with him and also I don't love him. I've tried, I've strained to love him but I can't. I am building a life with a man I don't love, and I don't know what to do about it. — David Nicholls

Were helping build capability and capacity in the new Iraqi Navy — David Nicholls

You can't expect people to build their lives around you — David Nicholls

I think you're amazing,' someone says to someone else, but it doesn't matter who, because they're all amazing really. People are amazing. — David Nicholls

You know what i can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, i mean endlessly, i've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you? — David Nicholls

All his words and actions would now be fit for his daughter's ears and eyes. Life would be lived as if under [her] constant scrutiny. He would never do anything that might cause her pain or anxiety or embarrassment and there would be nothing, absolutely nothing in his life to be ashamed of anymore. — David Nicholls

I'm trying to be inspiring! I'm trying to lift your grubby soul for the great adventure that lies ahead of you! — David Nicholls

I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this. — David Nicholls

It's the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or forty-three. It's that face. — David Nicholls

I'm inclined to think that, after a certain age, our tastes, instincts and inclinations harden like concrete. — David Nicholls

If there's anything I'm keen to get better at in my writing, then it's the writing of prose as opposed to the writing of dialogue. — David Nicholls

I know from your letters and from seeing you after your play that you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that's okay that's alright because we're all meant to be like that at twenty-four. In fact our whole generation is like that. I read an article about it, it's because we never fought in a war or watched too much television or something. — David Nicholls

And of course there is always joy in witnessing the joy of others — David Nicholls

Change lives through art, maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible. Eat sensibly. Stuff like that.
It wasn't much in the way of a guiding philosophy, and not one your could share, least of all with this man, but it was what she believed. — David Nicholls

Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it — David Nicholls

You're not going to turn into a wanker, are you?" says Tone, opening a can of larger.
"What do you mean?"
"He means you're not going to get all studenty on us," says Spencer.
"Well, I am a student. I mean, I will be, so, ... "
"No, but I mean you're not gong to get all twatty and up-your-own-arse and come home at Christmas in a gown, talking Latin and saying "one does" and "one thinks" and all that ... "
"Yeah, Tone, that's EXACTLY what I'm going to do. — David Nicholls

Dads had favourite armchairs in which they sat like starship captains, issuing orders and receiving cups of tea and shouting at the news without fear of contradiction. — David Nicholls

There's no shortage of orphans in 19th-century literature, but it's hard to find a single happy, communicative, functional parental relationship in the whole of 'Great Expectations,' even among the minor characters. — David Nicholls

When I was an actor, I worked with lots of men who had a bit of success early on, who were very good looking, who suddenly made a bit of money and who felt no embarrassment - and nor should they have done - about having a good time. — David Nicholls

I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference — David Nicholls

I'm not expressing myself very well - '
'Dexter, I understand you perfectly, that's the problem - — David Nicholls

Well I've fucked the olives. Not literally I might hasten to add! — David Nicholls

But the trouble with living in the moment is that the moment passes. Impulse and spontaneity take no account of the longer term, of responsibilities and obligations, debts to be paid, promises to fulfil. I — David Nicholls

At some point, I'd like to have an origina l idea. And I'd like to be fancied, or maybe loved even, but I'll wait and see. — David Nicholls

It's rapidly becoming clear that the so-called best years of my life are never going to happen — David Nicholls

Recently he has noticed idiocy creeping up on him. His resolve to keep his head on straight, his feet on the ground, is failing and he has observed, quite objectively, that he is becoming more thoughtless, selfish, making more and more stupid remarks. He has tried to do something about this but it almost feels out of his control now, like pattern baldness. Why not just give in and be an idiot? Stop caring. — David Nicholls

There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same - you couldn't just soak it up and then squeeze it out again. — David Nicholls

Oh you know me. I have no emotions. I'm a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun. — David Nicholls

Independence is the luxury of all those people who are too confident, and busy, and popular, and attractive to be just plain old lonely. And make no mistake, lonely is absolutely the worst thing to be. Tell someone that you've got a drink problem, or an eating disorder, or your dad died when you were a kid even, and you can almost see their eyes light up with the sheer fascinating drama and pathos of it all, because you've got an issue, something for them to get involved in, to talk about and analyse and discuss and maybe even cure. But tell someone you're lonely and of course they'll seem sympathetic, but look very carefully and you'll see one hand snaking behind their back, groping for the door handle, ready to make a run for it, as if loneliness itself were contagious. Because being lonely is just so banal, so shaming, so plain and dull and ugly. — David Nicholls

Perhaps grief is as much regret for what we have never had as sorrow for what we have lost. — David Nicholls

Cuddling was for great aunts and teddy bears. Cuddling gave him cramp. — David Nicholls

Fear and anxiety are great motivators for me. — David Nicholls

As a matter of fact, I think there are more things important in life than relationships. — David Nicholls

Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it's like you're free to get on with real life. — David Nicholls

Work hard at . . . something. — David Nicholls

Sorry' he said. 'No, I'm sorry.' 'What are you sorry for?' 'Rattling on like a mad old cow. I'm sorry, I'm tired, bad day, and I'm sorry for being so ... boring.' 'You're not that boring.' 'I am, Dex. God, I swear I bore myself.' 'Well, you don't bore me.' He took her hand in his. 'You could never bore me. You're one in a million, Em. — David Nicholls

At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction. — David Nicholls

It had sometimes puzzled me why falling in love should be regarded as some wondrous event, accompanied by soaring strings, when it so often ended in humiliation, despair or acts of awful cruelty. — David Nicholls

She had never been a proficient flirt. Her spasms of kittenish behaviour were graceless and inept, like normal conversation on roller skates. but the combination of the retsina and sun made Emma feel sentimental and light-headed. She reached for her roller skates. — David Nicholls

I tell you what it is. It's ... when I didn't see you, I thought about you every day, I mean every day in some way or another -"
"Same here -"
"- even if it was just 'I wish Dexter could see this' or 'where's Dexter now?' or 'Christ, that Dexter, what an idiot', you know what I mean, and seeing you today, well, I thought I'd got you back - my best friend. And now all this, the wedding, the baby - I'm so happy for you, Dex. But it feels like I've lost you again. — David Nicholls

He looks at the glass, almost ritualistically, then drains it, and thinks: not drinking would be so much easier if it wasn't so delicious. — David Nicholls

Unsettling, like seeing Stalin on a skateboard. — David Nicholls

The enemy, self-consciousness, is creeping up on them and Gibbsy or Biggsy is the first to crack, declaring that the music is shit and everyone stops dancing immediately as if a spell has been broken. — David Nicholls

Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a while day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? — David Nicholls

A sense that finally, finally something good was about to happen to me. I felt the proximity of change, and I had wanted more than anything for something in my life to change. Is it still possible to feel like that, I wonder? Or does it only happen to us once? — David Nicholls

There is a point in the future where even the worst disaster starts to settle into an anecdote. — David Nicholls

Everyone likes me. It's my curse. — David Nicholls

It didn't help when he told David that his mother would always be with him, even if he couldn't see her. An unseen mother couldn't go for long walks with you on summer evenings, drawing the names of trees and flowers from her seemingly infinite knowledge of nature; or help you with your homework, the familiar scent of her in your nostrils as she leaned in to correct a misspelling or puzzle over the meaning of an unfamiliar poem; or read with you on cold Sunday afternoons when the fire — David Nicholls

Envy was just the tax you paid on success. — David Nicholls

I had an infinite number of questions and would have been happy for her to recount her life in real time, would have been happy to walk on past Whitechapel and Limehouse into Essex and the estuary and on into the sea if she'd wanted to. — David Nicholls

And is that what love looks like
all wet mouths and your skirt rucked up?"
"Sometimes it is. — David Nicholls

Find the thing you love, and do it with all your heart, to the absolute best of your ability, no matter what people say. — David Nicholls

I don't think there's anything we can do, is there? We either stop or we carry on. — David Nicholls

What was it, she wondered, this need to brandish his shiny new metropolitan life at her? As soon as she'd met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her. Even so this would be the third girlfriend, lover, whatever, that she had met in the last nine months, Dexter presenting them up to her like a dog with a fat pigeon in his mouth. Was it some kind of some sick revenge for something? Because she got a better degree than him? Didn't he know what this was doing to her, sat at table nine with their groins jammed in each other's faces? — David Nicholls

She could be breathing fire and I wouldn't mind.
'You could be breathing fire and I wouldn't mind,' I say. — David Nicholls