I had always been led to believe that ageing was a slow and gradual process, the creep of a glacier. Now I realise that it happens in a rush, like snow falling off a roof.

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

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.

Why can’t you just love me? Why can’t you just be in love with me?

Well, I don't think Hollywood's a dirty word at all, I love a lot of Hollywood films.

An adaptation leads the cinema-goer to the original to find out what they're missing and if they already know the book, it can still illuminate a theme, a character, an idea.

Call me sentimental, but there's no-one in the world that I'd like to see get dysentery more than you