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I applied for the University of Life. Didn't get the grades.

David Nicholls

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David Nicholls
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: November 30
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Eastleigh Town
Applied
Grades
University
Didn
Life

More quotes by David Nicholls

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Maybe we've grown out of each other.
David Nicholls
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I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it's easier, isn't it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it.
David Nicholls
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As soon as she'd met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her.
David Nicholls
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Do you miss her?' 'Who? Emma? Of course. Every day. She was my best friend.
David Nicholls
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She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.
David Nicholls
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And it was at moments like this that she had to remind herself that she was in love with him, or had once been in love with him, a long time ago.
David Nicholls
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I still find it absurdly difficult to concentrate on a novel if there's a phone or computer to hand I have taken to locking them outside the room like noisy pets.
David Nicholls
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She glanced across to where Tilly and her brand new husband were posing for photographs, Tilly fluttering a fan coquettishly in front of her face. 'Unfortunately I didn't realise there was a French Revolutionary theme.' 'The Marie-Antoinette thing?' said Dexter. 'Well at least we know there'll be cake.
David Nicholls
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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.
David Nicholls
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If there's anything I'm keen to get better at in my writing, then it's the writing of prose as opposed to the writing of dialogue.
David Nicholls
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All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.
David Nicholls
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You can't throw away years of your life because it makes a funny anecdote.
David Nicholls
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I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember.
David Nicholls
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She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.
David Nicholls
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I love that sound,' he mumbled into her hair. 'Blackbirds at dawn.' 'I hate it. Makes me think I've done something I'll regret.
David Nicholls
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I identified with Pip from 'Great Expectations,' especially when I was younger I had the same kind of gaucheness and uncertainty.
David Nicholls
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Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it.
David Nicholls
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I had made this mistake once before, on a school trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum, when I followed a sign marked WOMEN, thinking it was an exhibition on the changing roles of women in society, and actually ended up standing in the ladies' toilets.
David Nicholls
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If she does have a failing, and it's obviously only a tiny one, it's that she doesn't seem particularly curious about other people, or me, anyway.
David Nicholls
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Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will. I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry.
David Nicholls