110+ David Nicholls Quotes (Humorous, Romantic And Insightful.)

David Nicholls is a British novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his novel One Day, which was adapted into a feature film starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. He has also written several other novels and screenplays, including Us and Starter for Ten.

Top 10 David Nicholls Quotes

1. You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.
2. Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.
3. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance
4. Be nice wont you?" "I am nice, I'm always nice." "But not too nice. I mean don't make a religion out of it, niceness.
5. I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.
6. Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it
7. 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.
8. She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show?
9. Cuddling was for great aunts and teddy bears. Cuddling gave him cramp.
10. I had always been led to believe that ageing was a slow and gradual process, the creep of a glacier. Now I realise that it happens in a rush, like snow falling off a roof.

David Nicholls Short Quotes

• Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.
• Read a book at the right age and it will stay with you for life.
• Welcome to the graveyard of ambition.
• Well, I don't think Hollywood's a dirty word at all, I love a lot of Hollywood films.
• But how can you not like music? That's the same as not liking food! Or sex!
• This isn't a letter, it's a gift.
• Fear and anxiety are great motivators for me.
• Work hard at . . . something.
• And then some days you wake up and everything's perfect
• I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember.

David Nicholls Famous Quotes And Sayings

She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

Screenwriting is always about what people say or do, whereas good writing is about a thought process or an abstract image or an internal monologue, none of which works on screen. — 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 that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her. — David Nicholls

These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through. Now he hears the ice creak beneath him, and so intense and panicking is the sensation that he has to stand for a moment, press his hands to his face and catch his breath. — David Nicholls

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

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

Afterward, there was some debate as to whether we'd actually "done it properly," which gives you some idea of the awesome skill and artful dexterity of my lovemaking technique. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can't find the time, there are people who've never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous. — 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. — David Nicholls

She had never been a proficient flirt. Her spasms of kittenish behaviour were graceless and inept, like normal conversation on roller skates. but the combination of the retsina and sun made Emma feel sentimental and light-headed. She reached for her roller skates. — 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

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 — David Nicholls

As the possibility of a relationship had faded, Emma had endeavored to harden herself to Dexter's indifference and these days a remark like this caused no more pain than, say, a tennis ball thrown sharply at the back of her head. — David Nicholls

He put one hand lightly on the back of her neck and simultaneously she placed one hand lightly on his hip, and they kissed in the street as all around them people hurried home in the summer light, and it was the sweetest kiss that either of them would ever know. This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today. And then it was over. — David Nicholls

In the future, I'll be braver, she told herself. In the future, I will always speak my mind, eloquently, passionately. — 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 funny and talented and all that, i mean endlessly, i've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you? — David Nicholls

You must do what you enjoy. — David Nicholls

[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. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

I read a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love 'Tender is the Night,' and its atmosphere of doomed romance. He was one of the greatest prose stylists, with a wonderfully clear but lyrical quality. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? — David Nicholls

This is me.’" He handed her the precious scrap of paper. ‘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 if you phone first — David Nicholls

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

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

She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things. — David Nicholls

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

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

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

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

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't learned how to crochet," I say, and Alice laughs. Obviously she thinks I'm joking, which is maybe for the best. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

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

This might sound really foolish, but when I came to Edinburgh in 1988 I had spent nearly all my life living south of Bristol, and I was just amazed that a city like Edinburgh was actually in the British isles. — David Nicholls

Most of the books and films I love walk a knife edge between romance and cynicism, and I wanted 'One Day' to stay on that line. I wanted it to be moving, but without being manipulative. — David Nicholls

I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference. — David Nicholls

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

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

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

Maybe we've grown out of each other. — 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 on top of her contact lenses so that other traffic loomed menacingly out of nowhere like alien space cruisers. — David Nicholls

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. — 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 greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results. — David Nicholls

He could feel her laughter against his chest, and at that moment he thought that there was no better feeling than making Emma Morley laugh. — David Nicholls

There's something unnatural about a woman finding babies or, more specifically, conversation about babies, boring. They'll think she's bitter, jealous, lonely. But she's also bored of everybody telling her how lucky she is, what with all that sleep and all that freedom and spare time, the ability to go on dates or head off to Paris at a moments notice. It sounds like they're consoling her, and she resents this and feels patronized by it. — David Nicholls

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

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

Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

The early days of any relationship are punctuated with a series of firsts - first sight, first words, first laugh, first kiss, first nudity, etc., with these shared landmarks becoming more widely spaced and innocuous as days turn to years, until eventually you're left with first visit to a National Trust property or some such. — 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 quality that she had always needed the most. — David Nicholls

And they did have fun, though it was of different kind now. All that yearning and passion had been replaced by a steady pulse of pleasure and satisfaction and occasional irritation, and this seemed to be a happy exchange; if there had been moments in her life when she had been more elated, there had never been a time when things had been more constant. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

When you're reading a book, you're always looking for the natural place to stop. With a movie, you can't really have that sense of it coming momentarily to a halt; there's pressure to keep the momentum up. — David Nicholls

The fact was I loved my wife to a degree that I found impossible to express, and so rarely did. — David Nicholls

…she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again. — 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 embarrassed by sentiment. I'm very embarrassed by corniness. — David Nicholls

Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them. — David Nicholls

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

Mortified at the speed with which intimacy evaporates. — David Nicholls

He has found himself more and more reliant on her at exactly the point that she has become less available to him. — David Nicholls

Find the thing you love, and do it with all your heart, to the absolute best of your ability, no matter what people say. — David Nicholls

I think reality is over-rated — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

And of course there is always joy in witnessing the joy of others — David Nicholls

She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy — David Nicholls

A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation. — David Nicholls

Envy was just the tax you paid on success. — David Nicholls

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

...and once again Dexter is struck by how easy conversation can be when no-one is in their right mind — David Nicholls

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

I think you’re amazing,’ someone says to someone else, but it doesn’t matter who, because they’re all amazing really. People are amazing. — David Nicholls

The sad fact is that I love Dickens and Donne and Keats and Eliot and Forster and Conrad and Fitzgerald and Kafka and Wilde and Orwell and Waugh and Marvell and Greene and Sterne and Shakespeare and Webster and Swift and Yeats and Joyce and Hardy, really, really love them. It’s just that they don’t love me back. — David Nicholls

She glanced across to where Tilly and her brand new husband were posing for photographs, Tilly fluttering a fan coquettishly in front of her face. 'Unfortunately I didn't realise there was a French Revolutionary theme.' 'The Marie-Antoinette thing?' said Dexter. 'Well at least we know there'll be cake. — David Nicholls

If there's anything I'm keen to get better at in my writing, then it's the writing of prose as opposed to the writing of dialogue. — David Nicholls

Why can’t you just love me? Why can’t you just be in love with me? — David Nicholls

She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought. — 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 in. The SIM card of his mobile phone in his pocket was overflowing with telephone numbers of all the hundreds of people he had met in the last ten years, and yet the only person he had ever wanted to talk to in all that time was standing now in the very next room. — David Nicholls

Being a decent human being will require effort and energy. — David Nicholls

I love that sound,' he mumbled into her hair. 'Blackbirds at dawn.' 'I hate it. Makes me think I've done something I'll regret. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

An adaptation leads the cinema-goer to the original to find out what they're missing and if they already know the book, it can still illuminate a theme, a character, an idea. — David Nicholls

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

Don’t keep fighting battles that are already lost. — David Nicholls

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. — David Nicholls

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

All his words and actions would now be fit for his daughter’s ears and eyes. Life would be lived as if under [her] constant scrutiny. He would never do anything that might cause her pain or anxiety or embarrassment and there would be nothing, absolutely nothing in his life to be ashamed of anymore. — David Nicholls

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

He's wearing his official university sweatshirt again, which puzzles me a little. I mean I'd sort of understand it more if it said Yale or Harvard or something, because then it would be a fashion choice. But why advertise the fact that you're at a university to all the other people who are at the university with you? — David Nicholls

Life Lessons by David Nicholls

1. David Nicholls' work emphasizes the importance of taking risks and embracing change in order to find true happiness.
2. He also encourages readers to appreciate the beauty of life's everyday moments, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant they may be.
3. Finally, Nicholls' writing highlights the power of friendship and relationships to bring joy and fulfillment to our lives.