And then she frowned, and shook her head, then put her arms around him once more, pressing her face into his shoulder, making a noise that sounded almost like rage. 'What's up?' he asked. 'Nothing. Oh, nothing. Just...' She looked up at him. 'I thought I'd finally got rid of you.' 'I don't think you can.' he said
David NichollsA joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.
David NichollsThe 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. Itโs just that they donโt love me back.
David NichollsYou'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.
David NichollsAt university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction.
David NichollsShe 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.
David NichollsMaybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager.
David Nicholls