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David Nicholls

David Nicholls Quotes

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Famous David Nicholls Quotes

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

LoveLifePassion
Book:One Day
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“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.”

LifeRomance
Book:One Day
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“I hate this complete obsession with class, especially at this place, you can hardly say 'hello' to anyone before they are getting all prolier-than-thou and telling you about how their dad's a one eyed chimney-sweep with rickets, and how they've still got an outside loo, and have never been on a plane or whatever, all that dubious crap, most of which is usually lies anyway, and I'm thinking why are you telling me this? Am I meant to feel guilty? D'you think it's my fault or something, or are you just feeling pleased with yourself for escaping your pre-determined social role or some self congratulatory bullshit? I mean, what does it matter anyway? People are people, if you ask me, and they rise or fall by their own talents and merits, and their own labours, and blaming the fact they've got a settee rather than a sofa, or eat tea rather tan dinner, that's just an excuse, it's just whining self-pity and shoddy thinking.... I don;t make judgements about other people because of their background and I expect people to treat me with the same courtesy... It's my parent's moeny and its not as if they got it from nicking people's dole or running sweatshops in Johannesburg or something. They worked fucking hard for what they've got. It's a privilege and they treat it as such and they do their best to give something back. But if you ask me, theres no snob like an inverted snob... Im just so fucking bored of people trying to pass plain old envy off as some sort of virtue.”

LifeEnvyWealthyUpper ClassSnobberyPoshClass System
Book:Starter for Ten
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“I know from your letters and from seeing you after your play that you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that’s okay that’s alright because we’re all meant to be like that at twenty-four. In fact our whole generation is like that. I read an article about it, it's because we never fought in a war or watched too much television or something.”

LifeGenerationsTwentiesAimlessTwentysomethings
Book:One Day
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