Quotes from David Nicholls

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

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.

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?

Friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.

When will you stop trying to educate me, I wonder? Never I hope.

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?

There may well be a scientific paper to be written on why walking in an art gallery is so much more exhausting than, say, climbing Helvellyn. My guess is that it is something to do with the energy required to hold muscles in tension, combined with the mental exertion of wondering what to say.

He wanted to live life to the extreme, but without any mess or complications. He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

and not for the first time she felt a reassuring shiver of dislike for him.

The attraction of a life devoted to sensation, pleasure and self would probably wear thin one day, but there was still plenty of time for that yet.

The beauty of the ultrasound scan is something that only parents can appreciate, but Emma had seen these things before and knew what was required of her. 'Beautiful,' she sighed, though in truth it could have been a Polaroid of the inside of his pocket.

I was looking forward to us growing old together. Me and you, growing old and dying together. Douglas, who in their right mind would look forward to that?

Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that?

He presses two fingers against each eye and attempts to account for this crippling melancholy, but is having trouble with rational thought. It feels as if someone has taken his head and shaken it. Words are turning to mush and he can see no plausible way of getting through this. Don't fall apart, he tells himself, not here, not now. Hold it together.

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?

Living in her University town felt like stayng on at a party that everyone else had left.

Like I said, I'm fine. I don't ever think of her.' And I didn't ever think of her, except from time to time.

I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference. You know, actually change something.

So? Most people hate their jobs. That's why they're called jobs.

unsettling, like seeing Stalin on a skateboard.

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.

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

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

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