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
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. – David Nicholls
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
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. – David Nicholls
Well, I don’t think Hollywood’s a dirty word at all, I love a lot of Hollywood films. – David Nicholls
This might sound really foolish, but when I came to Edinburgh in 1988 I had spent nearly all my life living south of Bristol, and I was just amazed that a city like Edinburgh was actually in the British isles. – David Nicholls
At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction. – David Nicholls
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
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
I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again. – David Nicholls
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. – David Nicholls
When I was an actor, I worked with lots of men who had a bit of success early on, who were very good looking, who suddenly made a bit of money and who felt no embarrassment – and nor should they have done – about having a good time. – David Nicholls
For the best part of my childhood I visited the local library three or four times a week, hunching in the stacks on a foam rubber stool and devouring children’s fiction, classics, salacious thrillers, horror and sci-fi, books about cinema and origami and natural history, to the point where my parents encouraged me to read a little less. – David Nicholls
I would never complain about ‘One Day’ taking off, but it made me painfully self-conscious for a long time. – David Nicholls
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
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
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
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
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
I identified with Pip from ‘Great Expectations,’ especially when I was younger; I had the same kind of gaucheness and uncertainty. – David Nicholls
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
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
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. – David Nicholls
I think probably I’m quite sentimental; I like big emotional stories, I like being moved by things, but I think I’m very embarrassed by sentiment. I’m very embarrassed by corniness. – David Nicholls