One Day Quotes

“What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. 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.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Just kidding' was exactly what people wrote when they meant every word.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if i could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at...something. Change lives through art maybe. 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.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“You know what i can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, i mean endlessly, i've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“And then some days you wake up and everything's perfect”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“And then she frowned, and shook her head, then put her arms around him once more, pressing her face into his shoulder, making a noise that sounded almost like rage.
'What's up?' he asked.
'Nothing. Oh, nothing. Just...' She looked up at him. 'I thought I'd finally got rid of you.'
'I don't think you can.' he said”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that's okay that's alright because we're all meant to be like that at twenty-four.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Oh you know me. I have no emotions. I'm a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“This is me.’" He handed her the precious scrap of paper. ‘Call me or I’ll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it’s not a competition. You don’t lose if you phone first”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“I think reality is over-rated”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“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, One Day

“Can I say something?'
'Go on'
'I'm a little drunk'
'Me too. That's okay.'
'Just....I missed you, you know.'
'I missed you too.'
'But so, so much, Dexter. There were so many things I wanted to talk to you about, and you weren't there-'
'same here.'
'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.'-

-'You know what happens you have a family, your responsibilities change, you lose touch with people'
'It won't be like that, I promise.'
'Do you?'
'Absolutely'
'You swear? No more disappearing?'
'I won't if you won't.'
Their lips touched now, mouths pursed tight, their eyes open, both of them stock still. The moment held, a kind of glorious confusion.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“So - whatever happened to you?'
'Life. Life happened.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Call me sentimental, but there's no-one in the world that I'd like to see get dysentery more than you”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“And of course there is always joy in witnessing the joy of others”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“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.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“And they did have fun, though it was of different kind now. All that yearning and passion had been replaced by a steady pulse of pleasure and satisfaction and occasional irritation, and this seemed to be a happy exchange; if there had been moments in her life when she had been more elated, there had never been a time when things had been more constant.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Envy was just the tax you paid on success.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“It would be inappropiate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? Taking a whole day to make a compilation tape? Asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or TS Eliot or, god forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at 38, to expect a song or book or film to change your life.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Today. This bright new day that awaits us”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“She was reaching the limits of how much its possible to change a man”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“I love him, she thought. I'm just not in love with him and also I don't love him. I've tried, I've strained to love him but I can't. I am building a life with a man I don't love, and I don't know what to do about it.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead?”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“The problem with all these fiercely individualistic girls was that they were all exactly the same.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show?”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Dont run before you can walk”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“For some time now she has had the conviction that life is about to change if only because it must. . . .”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“As the possibility of a relationship had faded, Emma had endeavored to harden herself to Dexter's indifference and these days a remark like this caused no more pain than, say, a tennis ball thrown sharply at the back of her head.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“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, One Day

“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 stationary. 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 .Emma is lost on anything less than 120gsm.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“...Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“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, One Day

“Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Things should look right, Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Independence is the luxury of all those people who are too confident, and busy, and popular, and attractive to be just plain old lonely. And make no mistake, lonely is absolutely the worst thing to be. Tell someone that you've got a drink problem, or an eating disorder, or your dad died when you were a kid even, and you can almost see their eyes light up with the sheer fascinating drama and pathos of it all, because you've got an issue, something for them to get involved in, to talk about and analyse and discuss and maybe even cure. But tell someone you’re lonely and of course they’ll seem sympathetic, but look very carefully and you'll see one hand snaking behind their back, groping for the door handle, ready to make a run for it, as if loneliness itself were contagious. Because being lonely is just so banal, so shaming, so plain and dull and ugly.”
― David Nicholls, Starter for Ten

“Sylvie's sort of pregnant. Well not sort of. She is. Pregnant. Actually pregnant with a baby.'
'Oh Dexter! Do you know the father? I'm kidding! Congratulations, Dex. God, aren't you meant to space your bombshells out a bit. Not just drop them all at once?'
She held his face in both hands, looked at it.
'You're getting married?-'
'Yes'
-'And you're going to be a father?'
'I know! Fuck me a father!'
'Is that allowed? I mean will they let you?'
'Apparently'
'I think it's wonderful. Fucking hell, Dexter, I turn my back for one minute...!'
She hugged him once again her arms high round his neck. She felt drunk, full of affection and a certain sadness too, as if something was coming to an end. She wanted to say something along these lines, but thought it best to do this through a joke.
'Of course you've destroyed any chance I had of future happiness, but I'm delighted for you, really.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Do you miss her?'
'Who? Emma? Of course. Every day. She was my best friend.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“For his thirtieth birthday he had filled a whole night-club off Regent Street; people had been queuing on the pavement to get in. The SIM card of his mobile phone in his pocket was overflowing with telephone numbers of all the hundreds of people he had met in the last ten years, and yet the only person he had ever wanted to talk to in all that time was standing now in the very next room.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn’t as curious or passionate as she had once been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of these nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years’ time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer or poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a little while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not overly happy.
Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them:
‘We grew up together.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Sorry' he said. 'No, I'm sorry.' 'What are you sorry for?' 'Rattling on like a mad old cow. I'm sorry, I'm tired, bad day, and I'm sorry for being so...boring.' 'You're not that boring.' 'I am, Dex. God, I swear I bore myself.' 'Well, you don't bore me.' He took her hand in his. 'You could never bore me. You're one in a million, Em.”
― David Nicholls, One Day