David Nicholls
David Nicholls
David Alan Nichollsis an English novelist and screenwriter...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 November 1966
silly writing fiction
At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction.
writing get-better dialogue
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.
writing made situation
She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.
art life-changing writing
The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a different. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Carona electric typewriter and work hard at ... something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible. East sensibly. Stuff like that.
growing-up selfish writing
I worry sometimes that I'm a bit moralistic; always writing about men who are learning to grow up, not be so self-absorbed, selfish or badly behaved. I wonder if that's dull and liberal and wimpy? I should probably write something that celebrates wickedness.
writing thinking somewhere-else
I think I became a writer because I used to write letters to my friends, and I used to love writing them. I loved the idea that you can put marks on a page and send it off, and two days later, someone laughs somewhere else in the world.
wall writing cells
The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.
writing sleepovers wasting-time
She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.
reading writing reading-and-writing
…she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.
writing thinking hands
I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think that's common among writers if they get cornered on something.
writing people abstract
Screenwriting is always about what people say or do, whereas good writing is about a thought process or an abstract image or an internal monologue, none of which works on screen.
painfully time
I would never complain about 'One Day' taking off, but it made me painfully self-conscious for a long time.
baby mean wish
I tell you what it is. It's...when I didn't see you, I thought about you every day, I mean every day in some way or another -" "Same here -" "- even if it was just 'I wish Dexter could see this' or 'where's Dexter now?' or 'Christ, that Dexter, what an idiot', you know what I mean, and seeing you today, well, I thought I'd got you back - my best friend. And now all this, the wedding, the baby - I'm so happy for you, Dex. But it feels like I've lost you again.
thinking my-best-friend want
I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.