David Nicholls Quotes

He wonders if he still might tell her that he loves her or, more tentatively, that he 'thinks he might be in love with her', which is both more touching and easier to back out of. ~ 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

There's something unnatural about a woman finding babies or, more specifically, conversation about babies, boring. They'll think she's bitter, jealous, lonely. But she's also bored of everybody telling her how lucky she is, what with all that sleep and all that freedom and spare time, the ability to go on dates or head off to Paris at a moments notice. It sounds like they're consoling her, and she resents this and feels patronized by it. ~ David Nicholls

There was a time when he used alcohol as a stimulant, something to lift his spirits and give him energy, but now he drinks like all parents drink, as a kind of early evening sedative. ~ David Nicholls

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

I applied for the University of Life. Didn't get the grades. ~ David Nicholls

But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel - independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic. ~ 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

She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy ~ David Nicholls

So do you think it's true what they say? About girls liking bastards?'
'He's not a bastard. He's an idiot.'
'Do girls like idiots then? ~ 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

... and Emma felt another small portion of her soul fall away. ~ David Nicholls

I read a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love 'Tender is the Night,' and its atmosphere of doomed romance. He was one of the greatest prose stylists, with a wonderfully clear but lyrical quality. ~ 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

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

But now the train had finally begun to move, and Albie had switched the fearless truth-telling eye of his camera lens from his untied laces to the walls of the tunnels under east London, because you can never have enough pictures of dirty concrete. ~ David Nicholls

Dexter had been led to believe, by TV, by films, that the only up-side of sickness was that it brought people closer, that there would be an opening-up, an effortless understanding between them. But they have always been close, always been open, and their habitual understanding has instead been replaced by bitterness, resentment, a rage on both their parts at what is happening. ~ David Nicholls

Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream. ~ 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 was talking too loud now, shouting almost, and a long silence followed. Why was she being like this? He was only trying to help. In what way did he benefit from this friendship? He should get up and walk away, that's what he should do. They turned to look at each other at the same time.
"Sorry," he said.
"No, I'm sorry."
"What are you sorry for?"
"Rattling on like a ... .mad 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 couldd never bore me. You're one in a million, Em."
"I'm not even one in three."
He kicked her foot with his. "Em?"
"What?"
"Just take it, will you? Just shut up and take it. ~ David Nicholls

She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. ~ David Nicholls

People change, no use getting sentimental about it. Move on, find someone else. ~ David Nicholls

A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck. ~ David Nicholls

Then
dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever. ~ David Nicholls

You start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few good jokes. ~ David Nicholls

The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her. ~ David Nicholls

Its almost as if he was raised by wolves, but wolves who knew the value of a decent education. ~ David Nicholls

No.' She took my hand. 'Let's make a French exit.' 'What's a French exit?' 'It's when you leave without saying goodbye.' 'I've never heard that before.' A French exit; no thank you for having me, no I've had a lovely time. To just walk away, cool and aloof. I wondered if I could. ~ David Nicholls

As the possibility of a relationship had faded, Emma had endeavored to harden herself to Dexter's indifference and these days a remark like this caused no more pain than, say, a tennis ball thrown sharply at the back of her head. ~ David Nicholls

I love that sound,' he mumbled into her hair. 'Blackbirds at dawn.'
'I hate it. Makes me think I've done something I'll regret. ~ David Nicholls

It wasn't much of a plan, and already there had been mistakes. ~ 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

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

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

I can't believe it's actually happening. This is independent adulthood, this is what it feels like. Shouldn't there be some sort of ritual? In certain remote African tribes there'd be some incredible four day rites of passage ceremony involving tattooing and potent hallucinogenic drugs extracted from tree-frogs, and village elders smearing my body with monkey blood, but here,rites of passage is all about three new pairs of pants and stuffing your duvet in a bin-liner. ~ David Nicholls

Call me or I'll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it's not a competition. You don't lose I you phone first. ~ David Nicholls

Why can't you just love me? Why can't you just be in love with me? ~ David Nicholls

He's wearing his official university sweatshirt again, which puzzles me a little. I mean I'd sort of understand it more if it said Yale or Harvard or something, because then it would be a fashion choice. But why advertise the fact that you're at a university to all the other people who are at the university with you? ~ 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

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

Was it the happiest day of our lives? Probably not, if only because the truly happy days tend not to involve so much organisation, are rarely so public or so expensive. The happy ones sneak up, unexpected. ~ 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

Next morning get up early and go to the Taj Mahal. Perhaps you've heard of it, big white building named after that Indian restaurant on the Lothian Road. ~ David Nicholls

Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you ~ David Nicholls

He's laughing me into a stupor, she thought. I could heckle, I suppose, I could throw a bread roll at him, but he's eaten them all. She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show? Eat a meal, go to bed, fall in love with me and I promise you years and years of top notch material like this? ~ David Nicholls

It's like everyone has a central dilemma in their life, and mine was can you be in a committed, mature, loving adult relationship and still get invited to threesomes? - Dexter Mayhew ~ David Nicholls

Next thing I know you've run off to Paris and thrown yourself under the nearest Frenchman- ~ Nicholls David

He's a better person when she's around, and isn't that what friends are for, to raise you up and keep you at your best? ~ David Nicholls

No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them. ~ David Nicholls

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

There's a particular grubbiness that comes with travel. You start showered and fresh in clean and comfortable clothes, upbeat and hopeful that this will be like travel in the movies; sunlight flaring on the windows, heads resting on shoulders, laughter and smiles with a lightly jazzy soundtrack. But in reality the grubbiness has set in ~ David Nicholls

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. ~ 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

Of course you should study whatever you want. The written appreciation and understanding of literature, or any kind of artistic endeavour, is absolutely central to a decent society. Why d'you think books are the first things that the fascists burn? ~ 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

Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. 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. ~ David Nicholls

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

I've only ever been recognised in the street once. In Sweden, strangely. ~ David Nicholls

Sylvie's sort of pregnant. Well not sort of. She is. Pregnant. Actually pregnant with a baby.'
'Oh Dexter! Do you know the father? I'm kidding! Congratulations, Dex. God, aren't you meant to space your bombshells out a bit. Not just drop them all at once?'
She held his face in both hands, looked at it.
'You're getting married?-'
'Yes'
-'And you're going to be a father?'
'I know! Fuck me a father!'
'Is that allowed? I mean will they let you?'
'Apparently'
'I think it's wonderful. Fucking hell, Dexter, I turn my back for one minute ... !'
She hugged him once again her arms high round his neck. She felt drunk, full of affection and a certain sadness too, as if something was coming to an end. She wanted to say something along these lines, but thought it best to do this through a joke.
'Of course you've destroyed any chance I had of future happiness, but I'm delighted for you, really. ~ David Nicholls

This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today. ~ David Nicholls

How about you then, Brian, any action?'
'Not really.' This sounds a bit feeble, so I add, nonchalantly, There is this girl, Alice, and she's invited me to stay with her tomorrow, at her cottage, so . . .'
'Her cottage? says Spencer. 'What is she? A milkmaid?'
'You know, a house, in the country, her parents' . . .'
'So you're shagging her then?' asks Tone.
'It's platonic.'
'What's platonic mean then?' asks Spencer, even though he knows.
'It means she won't let him shag her,' says Tone. ~ 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

With failing bravado, Dexter tried to laugh. "You sound like you're dumping me!"
She smiled sadly. "I suppose I am in a way. You're not who you used to be, Dex, I really, really liked the old one. I'd like him back, but in the meantime, I'm sorry, but I don't think you should phone me anymore." She turned and, a little unsteadily, began to walk off down the side alley in the direction of Leicester Square.
For a moment, Dexter had a fleeting but perfectly clear memory of himself at his mother's funeral, curled up on the bathroom floor while Emma held onto him and stroked his hair.Yet somehow he had managed to treat this as nothing, to throw it all away for dross. He followed a little way behind her. "Come on, Em, we're still friends aren't we? I know I've been a little weird, it's just..." She stopped for a moment, but didn't turn round, and he knew that she was crying. "Emma?"
Then very quickly she turned, walked up to him and pulled his face to hers, her cheek warm and wet against his, speaking quickly and quietly in his ear, and for one bright moment he thought he was to be forgiven.
"Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will." Her lips touched his cheek. "I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry."
And then she was gone, and he found himself on the street, standing alone in this back alley trying to imagine what he would possibly do next. ~ 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

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

Emotional intelligence, the perfect oxymoron! ~ 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

And it was at moments like this that she had to remind herself that she was in love with him, or had once been in love with him, a long time ago. ~ David Nicholls

Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately ,experience new things, love and be loved. ~ David Nicholls

We're not ourselves, are we? I'm certainly not myself, not anymore. And you're not either. You don't seem yourself. Not as I remember you. ~ David Nicholls

Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them:
'We grew up together. ~ David Nicholls

Until now travel had always been a fraught affair. Each year until she was sixteen, it had been two weeks fighting with her sister in a caravan in Filey while her parents drank steadily and looked out at the rain, a sort of harsh experiment in the limits of human proximity. ~ David Nicholls

Every week seems to bring another luxuriantly creamy envelope, the thickness of a letter-bomb, containing a complex invitation – a triumph of paper engineering – and a comprehensive dossier of phone numbers, email addresses, websites, how to get there, what to wear, where to buy the gifts. Country house hotels are being block-booked, great schools of salmon are being poached, vast marquees are appearing overnight like Bedouin tent cities. Silky grey morning suits and top hats are being hired and worn with an absolutely straight face, and the times are heady and golden for florists and caterers, string quartets and Ceilidh callers, ice sculptors and the makers of disposable cameras. Decent Motown cover-bands are limp with exhaustion. Churches are back in fashion, and these days the happy couple are travelling the short distance from the place of worship to the reception on open-topped London buses, in hot-air balloons, on the backs of matching white stallions, in micro-lite planes. A wedding requires immense reserves of love and commitment and time off work, not least from the guests. Confetti costs eight pounds a box. A bag of rice from the corner shop just won't cut it anymore. ~ 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

This, I thought, is why we have comfort zones, because they are comfortable. What can possibly be gained by leaving them? ~ David Nicholls

She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show? ~ David Nicholls

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

Whenever I hear Edith Piaf sing "Non, je ne regrette rien" - which is more often than I'd like, now that I'm at university - I can't help thinking, What the hell is she talking about? I regret pretty much everything. ~ David Nicholls

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell. ~ David Nicholls

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

Familiarity, globalisation, cheap travel, mere weariness had diluted our sense of foreign-ness. ~ David Nicholls

Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell .Emma is lost on anything less than 120gsm. ~ David Nicholls

Douglas, you have an incredible capacity for missing the point. Will you listen to me, just for once? The debate does not matter. It's not about the issues. Albie might have been naive or ridiculous or pompous or all of those things, but you apologized. You said you were embarassed by him. You took the side of a bunch of arms-dealers! Bloddy bastard arms-dealers against your son - our son - and that was wrong, it was the wrong thing to do, because in a fight you side with the people you love. That's just how it is. ~ David Nicholls

I love you is an interesting phrase, in that apparently small alterations–taking away the I, adding a word like lots or loads–render it meaningless. ~ David Nicholls

She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought. ~ David Nicholls

Whatever happens tomorrow, we've had today. ~ David Nicholls

Just to gloat at mum and dad's golden girl brought low. But ~ 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

Conversation, the gradual unveiling of oneself, one's quirks and characteristics, opinions and beliefs; what a fraught and awkward business that is. ~ David Nicholls

David Holdaway was my stage name. I was an actor for about eight years in the '90s. I had to change my name because there was another David Nicholls, and I thought if I changed it to my mother's name, she'd be touched. ~ David Nicholls

I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember. ~ David Nicholls

I think ... " She lifts her head from his shoulder. "I think that you have it in you to be a fine young man. Exceptional even. I have always thought that. Mothers are supposed to, aren't they? I don't think you're there yet. Not yet. I think you've got some way to go. That's all."
"I see."
"You mustn't take this badly, but sometimes ... " She takes his hands in hers, rubbing the palm of it with her thumb. "Sometimes I worry that you're not very nice anymore."
They sit there for a while until eventually he says, "There's nothing I can say to that."
"There's nothing that you have to say."
"Are you angry with me?"
"A little. But then I'm angry with pretty much everyone these days. Everyone who isn't sick. ~ David Nicholls

Most of the books and films I love walk a knife edge between romance and cynicism, and I wanted 'One Day' to stay on that line. I wanted it to be moving, but without being manipulative. ~ 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

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

She glanced across to where Tilly and her brand new husband were posing for photographs, Tilly fluttering a fan coquettishly in front of her face. 'Unfortunately I didn't realise there was a French Revolutionary theme.'
'The Marie-Antoinette thing?' said Dexter. 'Well at least we know there'll be cake. ~ David Nicholls

At some point you'll have to get serious about life. ~ David Nicholls

And once again Dexter is struck by how easy conversation can be when no-one is in their right mind ~ David Nicholls