Quotes from David Nicholls

There's no shortage of orphans in 19th-century literature, but it's hard to find a single happy, communicative, functional parental relationship in the whole of 'Great Expectations,' even among the minor characters.

For the best part of my childhood I visited the local library three or four times a week, hunching in the stacks on a foam rubber stool and devouring children's fiction, classics, salacious thrillers, horror and sci-fi, books about cinema and origami and natural history, to the point where my parents encouraged me to read a little less.

When I was an actor, I worked with lots of men who had a bit of success early on, who were very good looking, who suddenly made a bit of money and who felt no embarrassment - and nor should they have done - about having a good time.

I still find it absurdly difficult to concentrate on a novel if there's a phone or computer to hand; I have taken to locking them outside the room like noisy pets.

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

Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you

Be good. Do something good.

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

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

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

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

I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think that's common among writers if they get cornered on something.

Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it

Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will. I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry.

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

You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle

If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?

I love him, she thought. I'm just not in love with him and also I don't love him. I've tried, I've strained to love him but I can't. I am building a life with a man I don't love, and I don't know what to do about it.

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

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

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.

Envy was just the tax you paid on success.

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 quality that she had always needed the most.