I work three days at home, and two days in the British Library or the London Library, just to get out of the house and hide from the children.

David Holdaway was my stage name. I was an actor for about eight years in the '90s. I had to change my name because there was another David Nicholls, and I thought if I changed it to my mother's name, she'd be touched.

It's hard to overestimate the teenage appetite for high drama.

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.

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

To have had fame, even very minor fame, and to have lost it, got older and maybe put on a little weight is a kind of living death.

The early days of any relationship are punctuated with a series of firsts - first sight, first words, first laugh, first kiss, first nudity, etc., with these shared landmarks becoming more widely spaced and innocuous as days turn to years, until eventually you're left with first visit to a National Trust property or some such.