David Nicholls

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

“…she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.”

“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?”

“She shouldn't speak her thoughts; nothing good ever came of speaking your thoughts.”

“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.”

“Being a decent human being will require effort and energy…”

“Recently he has noticed idiocy creeping up on him. His resolve to keep his head on straight, his feet on the ground, is failing and he has observed, quite objectively, that he is becoming more thoughtless, selfish, making more and more stupid remarks. He has tried to do something about this but it almost feels out of his control now, like pattern baldness. Why not just give in and be an idiot? Stop caring.”

“She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.”

“…and Emma felt another small portion of her soul fall away.”

“…surprised all over again at how very comforting very bad food can be.”

“Your last letter made me laugh so much, Em, but you should still get out of there because while it's good for gags it's definitely bad for your soul. You can't throw years of your life away because it makes a funny anecdote.”

“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.”

“…there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.”

“…and you smile back and try not to think about the fact that you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other.”

“...if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of Confidence. Either that or a scented candle.”

“These days the nights and mornings have a tendency to bleed into one another.”

“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.”

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

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

“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 tell you what it is. It's...when I didn't see you, I thought about you every day, I mean every day in some way or another -""Same here -""- even if it was just 'I wish Dexter could see this' or 'where's Dexter now?' or 'Christ, that Dexter, what an idiot', you know what I mean, and seeing you today, well, I thought I'd got you back - my best friend. And now all this, the wedding, the baby - I'm so happy for you, Dex. But it feels like I've lost you again.”

“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.”

“You can't throw away years of your life because it makes a funny anecdote.”

“He put one hand lightly on the back of her neck and simultaneously she placed one hand lightly on his hip, and they kissed in the street as all around them people hurried home in the summer light, and it was the sweetest kiss that either of them would ever know. This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today. And then it was over.”

“For some time now she has had the conviction that life is about to change if only because it must. . . .”

“Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.”

“She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.”

“They ended up in a amusement arcade on Old Compton Street, where Nora insisted Stephen join her on one of those dance-step machines, and as he stood next to her, stomping out a dance routine on the illuminated dance floor, he had a sudden anxiety that Nora might be one of those kooky, free-spirit types, the kind of irreverent life-force who, in the imaginary romantic comedy currently playing in his head, turns the hero’s narrow life upside down, etc., etc. The acid test for free-spirited kookiness is to show the subject a field of fresh snow; if they flop on their backs and make snow-angels, then the test is positive. In the absence of snow, Stephan resolved to keep an eye open for other tell-tale kookiness indicators: a propensity for wacky hats, zany mismatched socks, leaf-kicking, a disproportionate enthusiasm for karaoke, kite - flying and light-hearted shoplifting, the whole Holly Golightly act.”

“...it's hard to overestimate the teenage appetite for high drama...”

“If you have to keep something secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place!”

“You were laughing at where I work.""So? You do!""Yes, because I work there. I'm laughing in the face of adversity, you're just laughing in my face!”

“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.”

“The problem with all these fiercely individualistic girls was that they were all exactly the same.”

“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.”

“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.”

“but they had also settled into the maddening familiarity of friendship; maddening for her at least.”

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

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

“He could feel her laughter against his chest, and at that moment he thought that there was no better feeling than making Emma Morley laugh.”

“I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference”

“Whatever happens tomorrow, we've had today.”

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

“Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will. I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry.”

“They have started to arrive. An endless cascade of luxuriously quilted envelopes, thumping onto the doormat. The wedding invitations.”

“The enemy, self-consciousness, is creeping up on them and Gibbsy or Biggsy is the first to crack, declaring that the music is shit and everyone stops dancing immediately as if a spell has been broken.”

“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.”

“The sad fact is that I love Dickens and Donne and Keats and Eliot and Forster and Conrad and Fitzgerald and Kafka and Wilde and Orwell and Waugh and Marvell and Greene and Sterne and Shakespeare and Webster and Swift and Yeats and Joyce and Hardy, really, really love them. It’s just that they don’t love me back.”

“What must that be like? To be admired before you’ve even said a word, to be desired two or three hundred times a day by people who have absolutely no idea what you’re like?”

“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?”

“You can’t expect people to build their lives around you”