Date: 2009

"A little bit of success and they want to knock you down well I don't care I like my job and I'm bloody good at it and it's much much harder than people think balls of steel that's what you need to be a TV presenter and a mind like a like a well quick-thinking anyway and besides you mustn't take ...

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"His brain gradually empties of work, of falafel wraps and oaty squares, and he starts to feel hopeful for the evening; perhaps he'll acquire that state of peaceful inactivity that is the nirvana of the exhausted parent."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"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."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"Emma felt another small portion of her soul fall away."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"This kind of erotic reverie occupied great swathes of Dexter's mental energy, and he wondered if perhaps Emma was right, perhaps he was a little too distracted by the sexual side of things."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"His mind snagged on the word like a fish on a hook."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"She turned to face the tree-line, but over the years she had reached a level of familiarity with Dexter where it had become possible to hear an idea enter his mind, like a stone thrown into mud."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"Blackbirds are singing on Coldharbour Lane and he has the sensation, so vivid that it is almost an hallucination, that he is entirely hollow; empty, like an easter egg."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"One day quite soon, probably within the year, he will walk out of a room and never see her again, and this thought is so hard to conceive of that he shoves it away violently, concentrating instead on himself: his hangover, how tired he feels, how the pain throbs in his temples as he trots down t...

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"He had always imagined that some sort of emotional mental equipment was meant to arrive, when he was forty-five, say, or fifty, a kind of kit that would enable him to deal with the impending loss of a parent. If he were only in possession of this equipment, he would be just fine. He would be nob...

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)