Simon > Simon's Quotes

“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

“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”
― 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

“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

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

“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

“I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, and maybe even call.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I’d lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that --I didn't let it-- and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“A few minutes later, he said suddenly: 'Kath, can we stop? I'm sorry, I need to get out a minute.'
...I could make out in the mid-distance, near where the field began to fall away, Tommy's figure, raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out. I caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight, caked in mud and distorted with fury, then I reached for his failing arms and held on tight. He tried to shake me off, but I kept holding on, until he stopped shouting and I felt the fight go out of him. Then I realised he too had his arms around me. And so we stood together like that, at the top of the field, for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“She always wanted to believe in things.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“The point is, there was a gap in Miss Emily's calendar collection: none of them had a single picture of Norfolk. I'd always wonder each lesson if this time she'd found a picture, but it was always the same. She'd wave her pointer over the map and say, as a sort of afterthought: 'And over here, we've got Norfolk. Very nice there.'
Then, that particular time, I remember how she paused and drifted off into thought. Eventually she came out of her dream and tapped the map again.
'You see, because it's stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, it's not on the way to anywhere. People going north and south, they bypass it altogether. For that reason, it's a peaceful corner of England, rather nice. But it's also something of a lost corner.'
Someone claimed after the lesson that Miss Emily had said Norfolk was England's 'lost corner' because that was were all the lost property found in the country ended up.
Ruth said one evening, looking out at the sunset, that 'when we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes

“…but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Man with the Twisted Lip - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

“Let me guess, it's the love of your life?" I said quoting Travis' statement about his motorcycle.
"No, it's a car. The love of my life will be a women with my last name.”
― Jamie McGuire, Beautiful Disaster

“Why can’t you just love me? Why can’t you just be in love with me?”
― David Nicholls, One Day