Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David Nicholls
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: November 30
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Eastleigh Town
Thinking
Joke
Jokes
Failure
Easier
Achieving
Achieve
Kick
Actually
Unhappiness
Make
Kicks
Think
Disappointed

More quotes by David Nicholls

Image
When I was an actor, I worked with lots of men who had a bit of success early on, who were very good looking, who suddenly made a bit of money and who felt no embarrassment - and nor should they have done - about having a good time.
David Nicholls
Image
I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember.
David Nicholls
Image
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
Image
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
Image
She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.
David Nicholls
Image
A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.
David Nicholls
Image
The fact was I loved my wife to a degree that I found impossible to express, and so rarely did.
David Nicholls
Image
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.
David Nicholls
Image
If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place
David Nicholls
Image
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
Image
It's hard to overestimate the teenage appetite for high drama.
David Nicholls
Image
The attraction of a life devoted to sensation, pleasure and self would probably wear thin one day, but there was still plenty of time for that yet.
David Nicholls
Image
Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it's like you're free to get on with real life.
David Nicholls
Image
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
Image
Read a book at the right age and it will stay with you for life.
David Nicholls
Image
I'm just not prepared to be treated like this anymore.' 'Treated like what?' She sighed, and it was a moment before she spoke. 'Like you always want to be somewhere else, with someone else.
David Nicholls
Image
Do you miss her?' 'Who? Emma? Of course. Every day. She was my best friend.
David Nicholls
Image
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 Nicholls
Image
Mortified at the speed with which intimacy evaporates.
David Nicholls
Image
I love Billy Wilder, and I love the way that his films can be very touching and very moving and very romantic, and at the same time there's always a little cynical undertone, there's always something that undercuts things.
David Nicholls