{"author":"David Nicholls","author_id":"David+Nicholls","total_quotes":84,"quotes":[{"text":"Our biographies involve each other so intrinsically now that we're both on nearly every page. We know the answers because we were there, and so curiosity becomes hard to maintain; replaced, I suppose, by nostalgia.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["marriage"],"id":8983,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"Their lips touched now, mouths pursed tight, their eyes open, both of them stock still. The moment held, a kind of such glorious confusion.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["best-friends","change","choices","heartache","kiss","moments","unproclaimed-love"],"id":9247,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["hope","love"],"id":14485,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"And there it is again, the look. There's no doubt about it, if Sylvie had a receipt, she would have taken him back by now; this one's gone wrong. It's not what I wanted.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["divorce","failure","love","relationship","relationship-ending"],"id":21988,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"All his words and actions would now be fit for his daughter’s ears and eyes. Life would be lived as if under [her] constant scrutiny. He would never do anything that might cause her pain or anxiety or embarrassment and there would be nothing, absolutely nothing in his life to be ashamed of anymore.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["children","life"],"id":25890,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"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.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["humorous"],"id":27008,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"Can I say something?''Go on''I'm a little drunk''Me too. That's okay.''Just....I missed you, you know.''I missed you too.''But so, so much, Dexter. There were so many things I wanted to talk to you about, and you weren't there-''same here.''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.'--'You know what happens you have a family, your responsibilities change, you lose touch with people''It won't be like that, I promise.''Do you?''Absolutely''You swear? No more disappearing?''I won't if you won't.'Their lips touched now, mouths pursed tight, their eyes open, both of them stock still. The moment held, a kind of glorious confusion.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["friendship","love","moving-on"],"id":32355,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"By the time Albie is my age I will be long gone, or, best-case scenario, barricaded into my living module with enough rations to see out my days. But outside, I imagine vast, unregulated factories where workers count themselves lucky to toil through eighteen-hour days for less than a living wage before pulling on their gas masks to fight their way through the unemployed masses who are bartering with the mutated chickens and old tin-cans that they use for currency, those lucky workers returning to tiny, crowded shacks in a vast megalopolis where a tree is never seen, the air is thick with police drones, where car-bomb explosions, typhoons and freak hailstorms are so commonplace as to be barely remarked upon. Meanwhile, in the literally gilded towers above the carcinogenic smog, the privileged 1 per cent of businessmen, celebrities and entrepeneurs look down through bullet-proof windows, accept coktails in strange glasses from the robot waiters hovering nearby and laugh their tinkling laughs and somewhere, down there in that hellish, stewing mess of violence, poverty and desperation, is my son, Albie Petersen, a wandering minstrel with his guitar and his keen interest in photography, still refusing to wear a decent coat.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["age","family-relationships","fantasy","future","humour","politics","youth"],"id":39905,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"It would be inappropiate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? 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 TS Eliot or, god forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at 38, to expect a song or book or film to change your life.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["books","growing-up","music"],"id":41905,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"},{"text":"There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same - you couldn't just soak it up and then squeeze it out again.","author":"David Nicholls","tags":["inspiration","literature","reading","struggle","writing"],"id":43034,"author_id":"David+Nicholls"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":84,"pages":9,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}