Best Sweet Sorrow Quotes by David Nicholls

"The world would end on Thursday at five to four, immediately after the disco."

"We’d hold our breath. Then someone would shout ‘bang’ and we’d laugh."

"Resigned to the hysteria, the teacher would sigh and pause the lesson while we squabbled over who had the most accurate watch."

"In the corridors and common rooms, the fire extinguishers took on a terrible potential."

"We learnt how to balance a chequebook. We stared out of the window at the lovely day and thought, not long now."

"Take care of yourself, you dick, wrote Paul Fox."

"I knew that I was not ugly – someone would have told me."

"We were plastic, mutable and there was still time to experiment and alter our handwriting, our politics, the way we laughed or walked or sat in a chair, before we hardened and set."

"I’m ashamed to say that I laughed, clapping my hand to my mouth."

"I had never in my life, before or since, been more primed to fall in love."

"I fell, but it was inconceivable that I would not see that face again."

"I wasn’t touched by some wand, there was no flourish on the harp and no change in the lighting."

"I remember feeling a great surge of jealousy towards her boyfriend, without knowing who he was or if he existed."

"Our parents became strangers to us, abducted and reprogrammed as adversaries."

"It’s hard to feel lyrical or sentimental about the reservoir, the precinct, the scrappy woods where porn yellowed beneath the brambles."

"The notion that these had been the best years of our lives suddenly seemed both plausible and tragic."

"It doesn’t matter. Stuff that happens now, it doesn’t matter. I mean it does matter, but not as much as you’d think, and you’re young, so young."

"Your dad’s not been easy to live with these last years."

"Being married – it’s not as simple as loving one person all your life."

"It's fuzzy, Charlie, it's messy and painful and you can have strong feelings for different people, absolutely sincere and strong."

"But I’m so unhappy, you have no idea, you think because we’re grown-ups."

"These things happen, Charlie, you’ll know one day."

"We’re not a big car, but still, I thought you’d notice it."

"Well, I suppose it is, in a way. You see, we live here."

"What is Shakespeare if he’s not the language?"

"The sun comes out, sky’s blue if you’re lucky, and suddenly there are all these preconceived ideas of what you should be doing."

"I just mean love’s a big word for it. You’re a different person then, aren’t you?"

"Babies exposed to Bach and Mozart are said to develop more quickly, but no one knows what five or six hours of bebop can do."

"But he had wonderful eyes, soft and brown, that would fix on us during his frequent bouts of sentimentality."

"My father liked to call himself an auto-didact, frequent use of the term ‘auto-didact’ being the hallmark of an auto-didact."

"I learnt about electricity by poking the toaster with a fork, about the digestive system by eating Lego, about water displacement by running my own bath."

"My friends now are careful to set the stage before starting a family, establishing career, the mortgage, spare bedrooms. Still in their early twenties, my parents chose to improvise."

"‘What I’d like to do,’ he said, holding my head in his long fingers as if it were a prize, ‘what I’d like to do, if you don’t mind, is take your head right off and carry it around with me. Is that all right?’"

"‘Could you turn it down a little please?’ He twisted round, with an indulgent half-smile. ‘Have fun, did you?’"

"The mystery of my return was not discussed and never would be, for which I was grateful."

"‘Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene…'"

"Because how could blood be ‘civil’ and what were civil hands anyway?"

"… for never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

"I’d decided that I’d concentrate on my own part. Perhaps there’d be something there to make Fran smile."

"‘You still want me to read—?’ ‘Sampson, yes; do a different voice or – my God!’"

"It’s possible to drink in moderation, you know. You don’t have to do yourself harm."

"God, I thought he’d never … thanks for waiting. Let’s go."

"I’m not going to bond with it, I’m going to chuck it in the woods."

"We even looked like a cult, all of us standing in a circle in loose garments in the morning light, barefoot on the lawn of a large secluded mansion."

"‘And I’m Grace,’ said the pale girl at his side, her long hair flowing down past the low waist of her dress, the kind of girl you’d see, said George, with her arms around a unicorn."

"The sun was out now, as emphatic as the rain it had replaced, and outside the door, Alina and Ivor were standing, heads close together, wrestling with a problem, the problem of me."

"We’d been watching the same rota since my childhood, British films with Julie Christie and Alec Guinness, John Mills and Richard Burton, spaghetti Westerns and film noir, Spartacus and The Vikings and The Third Man."

"So, can I just check – you’re not actually going to do it like that, are you?"

"It’s about the experience! Transforming young lives through Shakespeare!"

"I mean I don’t call them by their first names or anything, we’re not weird."

"‘Ha! Orchard,’ barked Helen. ‘Yeah, that’s what they call it, Charlie and the boys: Orchard. Who wants to come to London with me Saturday? I’ve got matinee tickets for Orchard—’"

"‘Tomorrow!’ said Keith and Colin and Lucy, and I cycled away with their eyes on my back and thought, well, no choice now."

"The communal flatulence gave an edge to all our warm-downs."

"But you can make coffee. How hard can it be to stick a bun on a plate?"

"It was a squalid, shabby kind of pleasure, like rousing an animal in the zoo by banging on the glass, and the only consolation I had was that in the aftermath we’d be excessively polite, lying head to toe on the sofa and watching old movies until he could sleep."

"Like coffee, like olives, we’d grow into jazz and in the meantime, he’d intersperse hard bebop with the Beatles for us, Bowie for Mum, and we unpacked the boxes to this soundtrack as happily as if they were presents on Christmas morning."

"‘I swear,’ said Alex, ‘one day we’re going to roll forward one vertebra at a time and all simultaneously shit ourselves.’"

"‘I don’t drink coffee.’ ‘Quite right too. But you will, and when you do—’"

"We’d give each other in and think, we work and we fit together and we love each other and if we can remain like this, all will be fine."

"With only the fusty Cottage Loaf Tea Rooms and an Orwellian greasy spoon for competition, there was no way we could fail."

"As far as I can remember, my dad was always there and for the most part we got on with our own small projects side by side, fuelled by tea and juice, cheap biscuits and sweet desserts in chemical pink made with water from the kettle, and early childhood was scrappy and grubby and disorganised and also a kind of bliss."

"Reading with Fran was like playing tennis with a competitor who wanted me to win, knocking the ball back courteously to my racket."

"You’re wasting time and when I turned to say goodbye the woman had disappeared but that was fine because Helen dragged me back to the dance floor."

"I’ve never known anyone remotely like you, not anyone. You are … the greatest thing."

"The only thing you said that annoyed me was you presuming I was going out with Miles, thinking ’cause he was that kind of boy, I must be that kind of girl."

"I just want enough money not to worry about money."

"I mean, fame as a by-product of the work, not for its own sake. Fame’s the big watch. Who wants that?"

"But there’s a … potential. Stupid word, school-report word, but it’s what I mean."

"The future’s the thing that’s going to happen."

"I have bought the mansion of a love, but not possessed it."

"It’s just like, I don’t know … clearing your throat."

"You came to me as but a boy, and now you are a man."

"If Juliet could forgive Romeo for murdering her cousin, then surely, surely a scratch-card scam was redeemable too."

"I pounded towards my hiding place, another future beckoning now, life in exile."

"I heard a car behind me and waited for it to overtake but instead saw it pull alongside."

"The strange, elastic nature of time, allowing me to note the neatness and completeness of the somersault."

"The scars are where they picked out the little chunks of crystal."

"It was like that cat in a box. Philosophically speaking."

"‘We only wanted a word, silly boy,’ said Mike."

"You think I don’t lie awake and worry about you?"

"You and your father are like an old married couple,"

"‘We’ll have a private party,’ and we slipped away into the night."

"The world was coming to an end, with no hope of salvation."

"‘It’s like having sex with the big light on,’ said Alex."

"‘I want to do it as soon as possible, for peace of mind,’ she’d said."

"‘Charlie, when,’ she said, ‘when have I ever, ever said any of those things?’"

"‘Well done, my boy,’ he said. ‘I’m very proud of you.’"
9179812

"There's plenty of time to hate your life. Do it when you're middle-aged, like everyone else."

"The good luck we have in school, in our work, is nothing to the great good luck of friendship."

"Life was a series of befores and afters, the dividing line shifting every seven years or so."

"We grew apart. Good! Good news. They made my life a misery, those boys. Little shits."

"The obligation to work hard rubbing up against the desire to do no work whatsoever."

"First love wasn't real love anyway, just a fraught and feverish, juvenile imitation of it."

"I don’t have to go, if you don’t want me to."

"I was not a gifted programmer and had never felt like an artist."

"You don’t have to go, if you don’t want me to."

"Love as a remedy, if not a comprehensive cure."

"This is a love story, though now that it’s over it occurs to me that it’s actually four or five, perhaps more."