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From an evolutionary point of view, most emotions - fear, desire, anger - serve some practical purpose, but nostalgia is a useless, futile thing because it is a longing for something that is permanently lost . . . .

David Nicholls

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David Nicholls
Age: 57
Born: 1966
Born: November 30
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Eastleigh Town
Desire
Emotions
Futile
Fear
Serve
Permanently
Lost
Anger
Evolutionary
Thing
View
Nostalgia
Something
Emotion
Practicals
Views
Practical
Purpose
Longing
Point
Useless

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Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance
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Well, I don't think Hollywood's a dirty word at all, I love a lot of Hollywood films.
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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.
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I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this.
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As a novelist, I'm incredibly lucky to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I don't lie awake at four o'clock in the morning, worrying.
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I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference.
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A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation.
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These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through. Now he hears the ice creak beneath him, and so intense and panicking is the sensation that he has to stand for a moment, press his hands to his face and catch his breath.
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The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her.
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…surprised all over again at how very comforting very bad food can be.
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I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Maybe we've grown out of each other.
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...and once again Dexter is struck by how easy conversation can be when no-one is in their right mind
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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.
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The fact was I loved my wife to a degree that I found impossible to express, and so rarely did.
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Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.
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Read a book at the right age and it will stay with you for life.
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