David Nicholls

“It has been fun and harrowing.”

— David Nicholls

“Everyone likes me. It's my curse.”

— David Nicholls

Dont run before you can walk

— David Nicholls

I think reality is over-rated

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

“I think reality is overrated.”

— David Nicholls

Be good. Do something good.

— David Nicholls

“And then it was over”

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

“Bye, Em.' 'Bye, Dex.' 'Goodbye.' 'Goodbye. Goodbye”

— David Nicholls

Fear and anxiety are great motivators for me.

— David Nicholls

…surprised all over again at how very comforting very bad food can be.

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

Were helping build capability and capacity in the new Iraqi Navy

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

“At some point, I'd like to have an origina l idea. And I'd like to be fancied, or maybe loved even, but…

— David Nicholls

You start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few good jokes.

— David Nicholls

“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…

— David Nicholls

She realises that if she is to save the show she is going to have to improvise a rousing speech, one of…

— David Nicholls

I still find it absurdly difficult to concentrate on a novel if there's a phone or computer to hand; I have taken…

— David Nicholls

I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think…

— David Nicholls

but they had also settled into the maddening familiarity of friendship; maddening for her at least.

— David Nicholls

Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim…

— David Nicholls

“Nevertheless she feels a great wave of affection for Dexter Mayhew. In eight years not a day has gone by when she…

— David Nicholls

“Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just…

— 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…

— David Nicholls

“The beauty of the ultrasound scan is something that only parents can appreciate, but Emma had seen these things before and knew…

— David Nicholls

...Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the…

— David Nicholls

The early days of any relationship are punctuated with a series of firsts - first sight, first words, first laugh, first kiss,…

— David Nicholls

“Who me? God, no, I'm terrible . . . " Then, just as an experiment, I say, "And, besides, I don't think…

— David Nicholls

“What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to simply try and be…

— David Nicholls

“I think you're scared of being happy, Emma. I think you think that the natural way of things is for your life…

— David Nicholls

“What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her…

— David Nicholls

“She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today's Emma Mayhew. Would she consider her self-centered? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out,…

— David Nicholls

“Change lives through art, maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience…

— David Nicholls

“The problem with telling people that they can do anything they want to do is that it is objectively, factually inaccurate. Otherwise…

— David Nicholls

I contemplate the idea that maybe I'm an alcoholic. I get this occassionally, the need to define myself as something-or-the-other, and at…

— David Nicholls

I tell you what it is. It's...when I didn't see you, I thought about you every day, I mean every day in…

— David Nicholls

“Well I can tell you now that married life is not a plateau, not at all. There are ravines and great jagged…

— David Nicholls