Quotes from David Nicholls

They say the personal is political and it's certainly fair to say that, like her politics, Rebecca Epstein's kissing is radical, forthright and uncompromising.

Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice to you?

The idea that someone, man or woman, should receive any kind of extra attention or affection or popularity or respect or adulation, simply because of a quirk of genetics and some arbitrary male-media-defined subjective notion of 'beauty' seems to me inherently wrong and unacceptable.

Perhaps all families have these fleeting moments when, without ever saying as much, they take each other in and think, we work and we fit together and we love each other, and if we can remain like this, all will be fine.

What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you.

I don't find it funny, I just think self-pity's probably not the answer.' 'It's not self-pity, it's the facts.' 'My life is effectively "over"?' 'I just mean. I don't know. Just….' He looked into the canal and gave a theatrical sigh. 'When I was younger everything seemed possible. Now nothing does.

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.

In rare moments of self-doubt, Dexter had once worried that a lack of intellect might hold him back in life, but here was a job where confidence, energy, perhaps even a certain arrogance were all that mattered, all qualities that lay within his grasp.

the greatest lie that age tells about youth is that it's somehow free of care, worry or fear. Good God, doesn't anyone remember?

For Stephen, London was less a city that never slept, more a city that got a good nine hours.

Suki is the nation's ideal girlfriend, a woman for whom bubbliness is a way of life, verging on a disorder.

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.

Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever

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.

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

Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions.

And it's true, I have a perfectly fine face, eyes that may well be 'kind' but are also the brownest of browns, a reasonable-sized nose and the kind of smile that causes photographs to be thrown away.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day.' Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

I think reality is over-rated,' he said in the hope that this might come across as dark and charismatic.

And 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 good jokes.

Puede que por eso las audioguías de los museos se han vuelto tan populares. Con ellas, una reconfortante voz te dice al oído qué pensar y sentir: «mire a la izquierda, por favor, observe». Sería maravilloso poder contar con esa voz también fuera del museo y a lo largo de la vida.

I love him, she thought, I'm just not in love with him and also I don't love him.

Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today.

its almost as if he was raised by wolves, but wolves who knew the value of a decent education.