Danny Wallace Quotes

The people around you are you. They share your history. They can even write it with you. And when you lose one, there's no doubt you lose some of yourself, however they're lost.

I grabbed my coat. We were off.
Well, I grabbed my coat, waited the best part of an hour for Hanne to choose between one pair of black trousers and another virtually identical pair, had a cup of tea, approved the trousers, and then we were off.

Yeah, but if you r heart isn't in it, you need to be where your heart is.

It's just a bit annoying when a man you've only just met thinks you're planning to assassinate a world leader. It puts a downer on your whole day. You start wondering who else people think you're secretly planning to kill.

If I was going to act irresponsibly, the least I could do was be responsible for it.

Andy had been a good friend, and a good human being. Someone who was loyal, and upbeat, and funny. You think if you're not in touch with someone, everything is probably okay with them. Life just ticks along. They do the same things as you. They grow up. They meet a girl. Maybe they get married. They progress in their work. Perhaps they get into IT, or move abroad, or have a kid. Maybe they get rich, maybe they stay poor. But you never, ever think, that maybe they're dead.

Wagamama. Text messaging aficionados might like to note that this is one of the most satisfying words you can possibly type.

It's the what if? The what then? And we know that if we go for it, if we risk it, we immediately stand to lose it. But weirdly, some part of us believes the feeling is two-way, because it must be; it's too special not to be. We believe that something's been shared, even if the evidence we have is ... what? A look that lasted a breath longer then we're used to? A second glance, when the glance could easily have been to check whether there are any cabs coming, or whether the jacket we're wearing that's caught their eyes would look good on their boyfriend, or why it is we seem to be staring at them.
I saw you. You don't use overhead handles on the train. Hoped it would jolt and you would fall to me. But no.
I smiled. These small moments, never said out loud, as formed and perfect as sweet little haikus, romance and longing carved out in the dust of a grubby city.

I love London. I love everything about it. I love its palaces and its museums and its galleries, sure. But also, I love its filth, and damp, and stink. Okay, well, I don't mean love, exactly. But I don't mind it. Not any more. Not now I'm used to it. You don't mind anything once you're used to it. Not the graffiti you find on your door the week after you painted over it, or the chicken bones and cider cans you have to move before you can sit down for your damp and muddy picnic. Not the everchanging fast food joints – AbraKebabra to Pizza the Action to Really Fried Chicken – and all on a high street that despite its three new names a week never seems to look any different. Its tawdriness can be comforting, its wilfulness inspiring. It's the London I see every day. I mean, tourists: they see the Dorchester. They see Harrods, and they see men in bearskins and Carnaby Street. They very rarely see the Happy Shopper on the Mile End Road, or a drab Peckham disco. They head for Buckingham Palace, and see waving above it the red, white and blue, while the rest of us order dansak from the Tandoori Palace, and see Simply Red, White Lightning, and Duncan from Blue. But we should be proud of that, too. Or, at least, get used to it.

The golden hour
that hour of sunshine where the world looks the way it looks in your dreams.

I think if you've got a good idea it will stand out in one of the different mediums. For example, something might happen to me today and it could be something to talk about tomorrow on the radio, or I can write about it, or perhaps it will be best suited to telly.

Essays just aren't my thing: no matter how hard I tried, it seemed I was always a bit average.

And before any Christian readers get all offended - relax. I'm not saying that I'm the new Jesus. I'm just saying there's a very good chance that I might be.

At first I assumed he was a Mexican, but slowly began to realise that a real Mexican probably wouldn't be wearing a sombrero in a London nightclub. And he'd probably have a real moustache, not a stick-on one. A Mexican with a stick-on moustache would be like a Super-Mexican, because he'd have two moustaches, and that'd be cool, because a Super-Mexican could probably use his poncho as a cape, and then I realised I was saying all this to the man's face.

A man came up to me at a party and asked if I wanted to be in his video game. I of course said yes. And then it turned out it was 'Assassin's Creed', so that was great. They let me ad lib a lot and mess about and be very snarky indeed, and I'm thrilled by the success of all their hard work.

Maybe sometimes it's riskier not to take a risk. Sometimes all you're guaranteeing is that things will stay the same.

Hello?'
'Mum?'
'Yes! Who's that?.'
'Your only son.'
A pause.
'Daniel?'
To be fair, I'd only given her one clue.

The only time you have no opportunities is when you decide to stop taking them.

Probably some of the best things that have ever happened to you in life, happened because you said yes to something. Otherwise things just sort of stay the same.

Why doesn't he say something to her?
But I knew why. Because there's the creeping fear that these moments don't actually exist outside your own head. No eyes meet across a crowded room, no two people thing precisely the same thing, and if only one person actually has that moment, is it even really a moment at all?
We know this, so we say nothing. We avert our eyes, or pretend to be looking for change, we hope the other person will take the initiative, because we don't want to risk losing this feeling of excitement and possibilities and lust. It's too perfect. That little second of hope is worth something, possibly for ever, as we lie on out deathbeds, surrounded by our children, and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, and we can't help but quickly give on last selfish, dying thought to what could have happened if we'd actually said hello to that girl in the Uggs selling CDs outside Nando's seventy-four years earlier.

My wife said to me recently that she hates couples who finish each other's sentences for them. I agreed that it was annoying, but it made me think that perhaps we were missing out on something, so now every time she says anything, I say 'full stop' at the end. I have been doing it for a full week now, and it has really kept the romance alive.

But the happiest people are the ones who understand that good things occur when one allows them to.

I try to find where the fun is and go there and then get asked if I want to have more fun. That's the way I want my life to go. Follow the fun.

I think we all have those moments at one point or other in our lives ... when we see someone and immediately imagine a whole universe around them. A relationship, a future, and all based on just a second which might not even have been in their company. It's amazing how quickly the human mind can come up with this stuff.

I mean No is power. No says, "I'm in charge." Think about how many times you've said yes in the past year, and how many times you would've liked to have said no instead. Maybe being able to say no is the one thing that keeps us sane. Some people go through their whole lives saying yes over and over again--yes to things they don't want to do but feel obliged to; yes to things that allow other people to take advantage of them, just because that's the way things are, the way things have always been. Some people need to learn how to say no. Because every time they say yes, they say no to themselves.

I had it all planned. Or, not planned exactly, but I'd planned to make plans. Plans were very much part of my plan.

I recommend keeping a diary. Diaries are cool.

I was her world, yes, and I was at that point we all reach where I was denying she was mine. I'd never quiet forgive myself for that.

I was saying yes because when you're in love, the world is full of possibilities, and when you're in love, you want to take every single one of them.

I'm not one of those guys who can hear a band and immediately cite their influences and probable heroes. There are guys like that out there. Play them the first drumbeat and they'll start banging on about Led Zeppelin or Limp Bizkit or how everything can be traced back to the man who wrote the Birdie Song. Dev can do it with videogames. He can take one look at a game and tell you what it's trying to be, where it got the idea, what it's been crossed with and how well it's done, but I just can't. Because I'm the other sort of person. A Type 2. One that judges everything on its own merits. Not because it's the right and just and fair thing to do, but because there's something about me that doesn't quite have that passion. That need for peripheral knowledge. I like a little of everything; I don't need it all. It can make conversations with the Type 1s a little strained. A Type 1 will have all his opinions ready to go and probably alphabetised before he even gets near you. A Type 2 will then shrink behind his sandwich.

I don't know if she has a boyfriend. You should ask her.'
'If I ask her, she'll say yes. It's better not to know. That way you're always in with a chance. Even if they're with their husbands, and you've just watched them take their vows, never ask them if they're married. Totally ruins your chances.

But unlike the classically trained, my dancing had no respect for so-called boundaries; I wasn't afraid to break the rules.

I sat down on the sofa, surrounded by years of coffee rings and sandwich stains. If the police ever did a DNA test on this sofa, it would be ninety per cent disappointment.

I just think - '
'Don't think. If you think, you'll never truly get over her. Thinking just extends things.'
So I decided not to think.

Sometimes the little opportunities that fly at us each day can have the biggest impact.

Sometimes life isn't magical, you see. Sometimes life is everyday. Its a trip to the keycutters in a rushed lunch break. It's the light, high rattle of a lightbulb's broken filament. It's your neighbour coming round to tell you you've left your car lights on.
Yes rarely its something outer. Maybe it's the glance of a girl on Charlotte street, for example. But how long before a glance runs out? How long can you keep coasting on a look?

I didn't know how to feel. I'd been rebuffed. I hadn't even been trying to buff.

It's funny. Dev had always said disposables were different. That what they contained was more special because you couldn't instantly see inside. You had to wait. You had to invest in the moment and then wait to see what you got. And those moments had to be the right moments. You had to be sure you wanted this moment when you pressed the button, because time was always running out, you were always one click closer to the end. That's what it felt like here. But that's what made it exciting.
I looked at the tin number at the top of the wheel.
1.
Eleven more clicks.
What would they be? Who'd be in them? What story would they tell?

Listen, um ... in case you even feel like saying hello ... ' I said, and I handed something else to her
My disposable camera. Twelve moments of my own.
She took it, and smiled like she understood, then looked at me once more. It was a look of recognition, something slowly dawning on her, my face meaning more to her then it had.
'I knew I knew you,' she said.
'I think I knew I knew you, too, I said.

Yeah, she must work round here. Lot of high class escorts i. this area. And traffic wardens, too. She's probably one or the other.

I rapped on the door. By which I mean I knocked on it, not that I did a little MC-ing. But if I had've done a little MC-ing, it would've been quite angry stuff, like NWA when they're on about the Rodney King incident. Only I'd have made it less about police brutality and more about old Devon men ripping young folk off with their made-up stories of broken down cars. And there I think you'll find the main difference between British and American crime.

It appears your son was 85 percent curry!

I will say yes to every favor, request, suggestion and invitation. I will swear to say yes where once I would say no.

Take the stupidest thing you've ever done. At least it's done. It's over. It's gone. We can all learn from our mistakes and heal and move on. But it's harder to learn or heal or move on from something that hasn't happened; something we don't know and is therefore indefinable; something which could very easily have been the best thing in our lives, if only we'd taken the plunge, if only we'd held our breath and stood up and done it, if only we'd said yes.

You were always an underdog in a videogame, but always guaranteed to win if you just kept plugging away, learned the moves, knew when to Save and when to Quit.

Because the one thing I hate about hope - the one thing I despise about it, that no one ever seems to admit about it- is that suddenly having hope is the easiest route to sudden hopelessness there is.

This is best thing about being manly: it's so easy to fake. Smear some oil on your face, or nod and say "Aaah" near mechanics.