David Nicholls

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

“These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through.”

“Okay, well I think the programme is like being screamed at for an hour by a drunk with a strobe-light, but like I said--”

“No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn’t as curious or passionate as she had once been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a whole 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? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of these nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years’ time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer or poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a little while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not overly happy. 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.”

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

“She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy”

“Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it”

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

“Sympathy for the spinster. I'm perfectly content, thank you. And I refuse to be defined by my boyfriend. Or lack of. 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.”

“She had got rid of his black bedsheets, the beer mats, secretly culled his underpants and there were fewer of his famous 'Summer Roasts', but even so, she was reaching the limits of how much it's possible to change a man.”

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

“The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a different. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Carona 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. East sensibly. Stuff like that.”

“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”

“Do you miss her?''Who? Emma? Of course. Every day. She was my best friend.”

“So - whatever happened to you?''Life. Life happened.”

“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?”

“Good God, 'the elusive thing'. She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.”

“Independência é o luxo de todas aquelas pessoas que são demasiado confiantes e atarefadas e populares e atraentes para serem apenas o simples e batido "sozinhas".”

“(...) também tem assim um jeito de mexer nos brinquinhos de botão de prata enquanto fala, que é indicativo de uma atracção subconsciente em relação a mim, ou de um furo ligeiramente infectado.”

“Às vezes era capaz de me fazer vomitar a mim próprio, a sério que sim.”

“O meu plano, idealmente, era trazer aqui a Alice num encontro, mas é bom fazer um voo experimental com outra pessoa primeiro, para poder determinar antecipadamente as minhas reacções espontâneas.”

“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!!!!”

“Ou talvez simplesmente tenha lido demasiados romances, os alcoólicos são sempre atraentes e divertidos e encantadores e complexos, como o Sebastian Flyte ou o Abe North em 'Terna é a Noite', e bebem por causa de uma tristeza de alma profunda, insaciável, ou por causa do terrível legado da Primeira Guerra Mundial, ao passo que eu me embebedo simplesmente porque tenho sede e gosto do sabor da cerveja e porque sou demasiado patego para saber quando devo parar. Afinal de contas, não posso propriamente pôr a culpa à Guerra das Malvinas.”

“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.”

“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”

“...and once again Dexter is struck by how easy conversation can be when no-one is in their right mind”

“She began walking again, south towards The Mound. 'Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had energy for that? 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. Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at ... something. Change lives through art maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.”

“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.”

“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.”

“People change, no use getting sentimental about it. Move on, find someone else.”

“She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things.”

“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.”

“As a matter of fact, I think there are more things important in life than "relationships.”

“And is that what love looks like - all wet mouth sand your skirt rucked up?”

“She no longer think that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.”

“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.”

“Who do you think you are, Jane Eyre? Grow up. Be sensible. Don't get carried away.”

“I think reality is over-rated.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.”

“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.”

“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.”

“…mortified at the speed with which intimacy evaporates…”

“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.”

“Happyish. Well, happyish isn't so bad.''It's the most we can hope for.”

“I'm just not prepared to be treated like this anymore.''Treated like what?'She sighed, and it was a moment before she spoke. 'Like you always want to be somewhere else, with someone else.”

“Maybe we've grown out of each other.”

“If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?”

“Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever…”