David Nicholls Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best David Nicholls Quotes. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the David Nicholls Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.

1

My 20s was a sea of worry. I worried about benefit form

My 20s was a sea of worry. I worried about benefit forms, about being thrown out of my flat. I never went on holiday because I thought: ‘What if an audition comes up?’ I was a nervous wreck.

David Nicholls

2

An adaptation leads the cinema-goer to the original to find out what they’re missing and if they already know the book, it can still illuminate a theme, a character, an idea.

David Nicholls

3

David Holdaway was my stage name. I was an actor for about eight years in the ’90s. I had to change my name because there was another David Nicholls, and I thought if I changed it to my mother‘s name, she‘d be touched.

David Nicholls

4

I’ve been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember.

David Nicholls

5

When you‘re reading a book, you’re always looking for the natural place to stop. With a movie, you can’t really have that sense of it coming momentarily to a halt; there’s pressure to keep the momentum up.

David Nicholls

6

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

7

I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again.

David Nicholls

8

At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction.

David Nicholls

9

I identified with Pip from ‘Great Expectations,’ especially when I was younger; I had the same kind of gaucheness and uncertainty.

David Nicholls

10

Read a book at the right age and it will stay with you for life.

David Nicholls

11

Well, I don’t think Hollywood‘s a dirty word at all, I love a lot of Hollywood films.

David Nicholls

12

I’ve only ever been recognised in the street once. In Sweden, strangely.

David Nicholls

13

I read a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love ‘Tender is the Night,’ and its atmosphere of doomed romance. He was one of the greatest prose stylists, with a wonderfully clear but lyrical quality.

David Nicholls

14

Fear and anxiety are great motivators for me.

David Nicholls

15

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

16

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.

David Nicholls

17

Well, it’s so hard for books to take off. You give years of your life to something that probably won’t happen, so when it does, it feels a little… unjust.

David Nicholls

18

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.

David Nicholls

19

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.

David Nicholls

20

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can’t find the time, there are people who’ve never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous.

David Nicholls

21

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.

David Nicholls

22

There’s no shortage of orphans in 19th-century literature, but it’s hard to find a single happy, communicative, functional parental relationship in the whole of ‘Great Expectations,’ even among the minor characters.

David Nicholls