The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her.
David NichollsShe had got rid of his black bedsheets, the beer mats, secretly culled his underpants and there were fewer of his famous 'Summer Roasts', but even so, she was reaching the limits of how much it's possible to change a man.
David NichollsLiving in her University town felt like stayng on at a party that everyone else had left.
David NichollsI'm trying to be inspiring! I'm trying to lift your grubby soul for the great adventure that lies ahead of you!
David NichollsNo, 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.
Okay, well I think the programme is like being screamed at for an hour by a drunk with a strobe-light, but like I said--
David NichollsTags: funny hilarious saracasm
These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through.
David NichollsBut at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel — independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.
David Nicholls[He] didn’t like to think of himself as vain, but there were definitely times when he wished there was someone on hand to take his photograph.
David NichollsOccasionally, very occasionally, say at four o’clock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isn’t broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: ‘get in a taxi now’ or ‘I need to see you, we need to talk’. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel – independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.
David NichollsTags: loneliness
« first previous
Page 10 of 27.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.