382 Quotes by David Nicholls

Most of the books and films I love walk a knife edge between romance and cynicism, and I wanted ‘One Day’ to stay on that line. I wanted it to be moving, but without being manipulative.

Maybe if you listen to Radio 4 enough from an early age, you just get educated subliminally.

My wife at fifty-two years old seems to me just as attractive as the day I first met her. If I were to say this out loud, she would say, ‘Douglas, that’s just a line. No one prefers wrinkles, no one prefers grey.’ To which I’d reply, ‘But none of this is a surprise. I’ve been expecting to watch you grow older ever since we met. Why should it trouble me? It’s the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or forty-three. It’s that face.

Imagine staying awake all night not because you’re worried about the future but because it’s FUN.

It had sometimes puzzled me why falling in love should be regarded as some wondrous event, accompanied by soaring strings, when it so often ended in humiliation, despair or acts of awful cruelty.

I’m trying to be inspiring! I’m trying to lift your grubby soul for the great adventure that lies ahead of you!

I’m aware that couples tend to embellish ‘how we met’ folklore with all kinds of detail and significance. We shape and sentimentalise these first encounters into creation myths to reassure ourselves and our offspring that it was somehow ‘meant to be’.

I would never complain about ‘One Day’ taking off, but it made me painfully self-conscious for a long time.

It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.