Quotes from David Nicholls

I love you is an interesting phrase, in that apparently small alterations–taking away the I, adding a word like lots or loads–render it meaningless.

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.

As soon as she'd met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her.

Being a decent human being will require effort and energy…

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.

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

Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever…

Emotional intelligence, the perfect oxymoron!

Paris was all so... Parisian. I was captivated by the wonderful wrongness of it all - the unfamiliar fonts, the brand names in the supermarket, the dimensions of the bricks and paving stones. Children, really quite small children, speaking fluent French!

maybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager...

Everything was fine, and she had the rare, new sensation of being exactly where she wanted to be.

I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.

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

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.

I'm aware that couples tend to embellish 'how we met' folklore with all kinds of detail and significance. We shape and sentimentalise these first encounters into creation myths to reassure ourselves and our offspring that it was somehow 'meant to be'.

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

Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it.

Cuddling was for great aunts and teddy bears. Cuddling gave him cramp.

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

Why can't you just love me? Why can't you just be in love with me? You were once, weren't you? In the beginning?

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

Alice doesn't seem to mind because she's laughing too, and biting her lip, all doe-eyed, and tossing her freshly washed hair, and Norton tosses his lovely, glossy hair back, and she tosses her hair in return, and he tosses his, and she tosses hers, and it;s like some mating ritual on a wildlife program.

No matter how predictable, banal and listless the rest of my life might be, you can guarantee that there'll always be something interesting going on with my skin.

Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately ,experience new things, love and be loved.