David Nicholls quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by David Nicholls

David Nicholls Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from David Nicholls on Wise Famous Quotes.

Grief is as much about regret for what you've never had as sadness for what you've lost.

Just to gloat at mum and dad's golden girl brought low. But

We can just hang out and walk and read and talk and stuff.

And you stupid, stupid woman, stupid for caring, stupid for thinking that he cared.

Well, I don't think Hollywood's a dirty word at all, I love a lot of Hollywood films.

She liked to 'leave dishes to soak', an act of self-deception that I've always abhorred.

Dont run before you can walk

This, I thought, is why we have comfort zones, because they are comfortable. What can possibly be gained by leaving them?

No-one ever built a statue of a critic.

So do you think it's true what they say? About girls liking bastards?'
'He's not a bastard. He's an idiot.'
'Do girls like idiots then?

She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy

She shouldn't speak her thoughts; nothing good ever came of speaking your thoughts.

He looks at the glass, almost ritualistically, then drains it, and thinks: not drinking would be so much easier if it wasn't so delicious.

The attraction of a life devoted to sensation, pleasure and self would probably wear thin one day, but there was still plenty of time for that yet.

These days the nights and mornings have a tendency to bleed into one another.

The problem with all these fiercely individualistic girls was that they were all exactly the same.

She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.

To have had fame, even very minor fame, and to have lost it, got older and maybe put on a little weight is a kind of living death.

A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.

had put them up to it, perhaps the chefs

People change, no use getting sentimental about it. Move on, find someone else.

I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember.

Its almost as if he was raised by wolves, but wolves who knew the value of a decent education.

... and you smile back and try not to think about the fact that you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other.

And of course there is always joy in witnessing the joy of others

You can't expect people to build their lives around you

And then it was over

Call me or I'll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it's not a competition. You don't lose I you phone first.

You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.

Who do you think you are, Jane Eyre? Grow up. Be sensible. Don't get carried away.

I applied for the University of Life. Didn't get the grades.

Then
dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

At some point you'll have to get serious about life.

We're not arguing, we're discussing,

Call me sentimental, but there's no-one in the world that I'd like to see get dysentery more than you

Why can't you just love me? Why can't you just be in love with me?

She was reaching the limits of how much its possible to change a man

But how can you not like music? That's the same as not liking food! Or sex!

Happyish. Well, happyish isn't so bad.'
'It's the most we can hope for.

Emotional intelligence, the perfect oxymoron!

I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this.

And I have a tiny little moment of anxiety, because I can't remember whether or not we're meant to be boycotting mars bars.

Work hard at . . . something.

But I've been here in Wolverhampton for two days now and that's felt pretty eternal (though I can reveal that the Pizza Hut

Do you miss her?'
'Who? Emma? Of course. Every day. She was my best friend.

Maybe we've grown out of each other.

Clearly the key to having a long and successful marriage would be to have a non-lethal heart attack every three months or so

Envy was just the tax you paid on success.

Maybe if you listen to Radio 4 enough from an early age, you just get educated subliminally

So? Most people hate their jobs. That's why they're called jobs.

No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.

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.

It's hard to overestimate the teenage appetite for high drama ...

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

So - whatever happened to you?' 'Life. Life happened.

You've got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it's unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it'll be a cyanide capsule.

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

I considered the concept of "oversharing", and what undersharing might be, and whether it was ever possible to settle on something in between.

He had one of those faces where you were aware of the bones beneath the skin, as if even his bare skull would be attractive.

The city had defeated her, just like they said it would. Like some overcrowded party, no one had noticed her arrival, and would notice if she left.

Brian: I love books
Prof. Morrison: The contents of books, or just owning a whole load of books?

Oh you know me. I have no emotions. I'm a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun.

And is that what love looks like
all wet mouths and your skirt rucked up?"
"Sometimes it is.

This isn't a letter, it's a gift.

Then they kiss again, and she goes to work, and he goes to work, and so the days go by, faster than ever.

Well, in the first flush of love, if someone tells you to read something then you damn well read it [ ... ]

For Stephen, London was less a city that never slept, more a city that got a good nine hours.

Conversation, the gradual unveiling of oneself, one's quirks and characteristics, opinions and beliefs; what a fraught and awkward business that is.

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.

I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.

Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their

my digs look as if they've been dug

Though not my field, I was familiar with the notion of alternative realities, but was not used to occupying the one I liked the best.

And not for the first time she felt a reassuring shiver of dislike for him.

As new dawns go, this one is depressingly like the old dawn.

Imagine staying awake all night not because you're worried about the future but because it's FUN

Were helping build capability and capacity in the new Iraqi Navy

The unrequited love of ones' only living offspring has its own particular slow acid burn

I've only ever been recognised in the street once. In Sweden, strangely.

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph.

It's the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or forty-three. It's that face.

At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction.

Maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few jokes.

It's rapidly becoming clear that the so-called best years of my life are never going to happen

Things should look right, Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary

While there was breath in my body, she would never lack sufficient AA batteries.

I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again.

[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.

Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you.

Food is the new rock and roll.

I don't think there's anything we can do, is there? We either stop or we carry on.

You know, if I ruled the world, which I fully intend to do one day by the way, first thing I'd do ...

I'm inclined to think that, after a certain age, our tastes, instincts and inclinations harden like concrete.

I would never complain about 'One Day' taking off, but it made me painfully self-conscious for a long time.

He's a better person when she's around, and isn't that what friends are for, to raise you up and keep you at your best?

And it was at moments like this that she had to remind herself that she was in love with him, or had once been in love with him, a long time ago.

I'm not expressing myself very well - '
'Dexter, I understand you perfectly, that's the problem -

You must do what you enjoy.

They have started to arrive. An endless cascade of luxuriously quilted envelopes, thumping onto the doormat. The wedding invitations.