David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

I think reality is over-rated

— David Nicholls

“I think reality is overrated.”

— David Nicholls

“Everyone likes me. It's my curse.”

— David Nicholls

Dont run before you can walk

— David Nicholls

“It has been fun and harrowing.”

— David Nicholls

“fictional character, this seemed to”

— David Nicholls

Work hard at . . . something.

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place

— David Nicholls

And then some days you wake up and everything's perfect

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

Read a book at the right age and it will stay with you for life.

— David Nicholls

You can't throw away years of your life because it makes a funny anecdote.

— David Nicholls

“She made you decent. And in return you made her so, so happy.”

— David Nicholls

“Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice to you?”

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

The attraction of a life devoted to sensation, pleasure and self would probably wear thin one day, but there was still plenty…

— David Nicholls

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…

— David Nicholls

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

— David Nicholls

“...if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would…

— David Nicholls

I'm trying to be inspiring! I'm trying to lift your grubby soul for the great adventure that lies ahead of you!

— David Nicholls

“And maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough…

— David Nicholls

“Anyway, that's why you do it. Not to be famous, just to be good. To do good work. Find the thing you…

— David Nicholls

This might sound really foolish, but when I came to Edinburgh in 1988 I had spent nearly all my life living south…

— David Nicholls

You know what i can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and…

— David Nicholls

“Until now travel had always been a fraught affair. Each year until she was sixteen, it had been two weeks fighting with…

— David Nicholls

As soon as she'd met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew…

— David Nicholls

“But the thing about Literature is, well, basically it encapsulates all the disciplines - it's history, philosophy, politics, sexual politics, sociology, psychology,…

— David Nicholls

All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my…

— David Nicholls

Emma was a shocking driver, simultaneously sloppy and petrified, and for the first fifty miles had been absent-mindedly driving with her spectacles…

— David Nicholls

I think I became a writer because I used to write letters to my friends, and I used to love writing them.…

— David Nicholls

“What if life had taken a different route? What is had preserved with those letters to publishers when she was twenty-two? Might…

— David Nicholls

“Live each day as if it’s your last’, that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What…

— David Nicholls

“Emma's mid-twenties had brought a second adolescence even more self-absorbed and doom-laden than the first one. 'Why don't you just come home,…

— David Nicholls

“They ended up in a amusement arcade on Old Compton Street, where Nora insisted Stephen join her on one of those dance-step…

— David Nicholls

For his thirtieth birthday he had filled a whole night-club off Regent Street; people had been queuing on the pavement to get…

— David Nicholls

He's laughing me into a stupor, she thought. I could heckle, I suppose, I could throw a bread roll at him, but…

— David Nicholls

“Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a while day to make a…

— David Nicholls

“Recently he has noticed idiocy creeping up on him. His resolve to keep his head on straight, his feet on the ground,…

— David Nicholls