What must that be like? To be admired before youโve even said a word, to be desired two or three hundred times a day by people who have absolutely no idea what youโre like?
David NichollsNo matter how predictable, banal and listless the rest of my life might be, you can guarantee that there'll always be something interesting going on with my skin.
David NichollsShe had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.
David NichollsMy 20s was a sea of worry. I worried about benefit forms, about being thrown out of my flat. I never went on holiday because I thought: 'What if an audition comes up?' I was a nervous wreck.
David NichollsOccasionally, very occasionally, say at four oโclock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isnโt broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: โget in a taxi nowโ or โI need to see you, we need to talkโ. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel โ independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.
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