It didn't help when he told David that his mother would always be with him, even if he couldn't see her. An unseen mother couldn't go for long walks with you on summer evenings, drawing the names of trees and flowers from her seemingly infinite knowledge of nature; or help you with your homework, the familiar scent of her in your nostrils as she leaned in to correct a misspelling or puzzle over the meaning of an unfamiliar poem; or read with you on cold Sunday afternoons when the fire

— David Nicholls

It's scented! Your wedding invitations are scented?"" It's meant to be lavender."" No, DEX - it's money. It smells of money.

— David Nicholls

It would be inappropriate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardor or intensity of a 22-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? Taking a whole day to make a compilation tape? Asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or TS Eliot or, god forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at 38, to expect a song or book or film to change your life.

— David Nicholls

I was wary of my sister's cooking, which invariably consisted of a tubular pasta and economy cheese, charred black on the surface, with either tinned tuna or lardy mince lurking beneath the molten crust ... So that evening, in a tiny flat in Tooting, I was pushed into the tiny kitchen where sixteen people sat crammed around a tiny trestle table designed for pasting wallpaper, one of my sister's notorious pasta bakes smoldering in its center like a meteorite, smelling of toasted cat food.

— David Nicholls

Keep the change," he smiled. Was there ever a more empowering phrase than "Keep the change"?

— 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

Live each day as if it’s your last’, that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained, or you felt a bit gland? It just wasn’t practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the surrounding bit. Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at … something. Change lives through art, maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever...

— David Nicholls

Lonely' is a troubling word and not one to be tossed around lightly. It makes people uncomfortable, summoning up as it does all kinds of harsher adjectives, like 'sad' or 'strange'. I have always been well liked, I think, always well regarded and respected, but having few enemies is not the same as having many friends, and there was no denying that I was, if not 'lonely', more solitary than I'd hoped to be at that time.

— David Nicholls

Maybe they're in love."" And is that what love looks like - all wet mouths and your skirt rucked up?"" Sometines it is.

— David Nicholls

Maybe we've grown out of each other.

— David Nicholls