Nicholas Sparks Quotes

Breaking a glass in the northwest is rather like belching in Arabia, for it appears to be done as a mark of appreciation or elation.

Where I'm from, we don't do the kiss-on-the-cheek thing. Sometimes we can feel a bit awkward in England. Someone needs to let me know what the rules are because I don't want to be rude. I need a little more etiquette coaching.

The Germans and Austrians are very polite, the Swiss are very reserved and the Spanish usually kiss me. The Brits write me letters.

There's a thing that happens to Midwesterners - we spend a lot of time talking about having a different set of rules about manners. I don't know about ethics, but certainly about manners, what you would say and what you wouldn't say. And that is not very East coast.

It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think – the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late.

He was violating the second rule of the two rules for getting on well with people that speak Spanish; give the men tobacco and leave the women alone

The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.

I think sometimes people forget how to be nice to people. I try not to let it get to me.

The idea of a commonwealth relationship is alien to most people but I think that's true generally.

I think people hold back all kinds of things. And in a way, they just want to be nice. They want to be civil.

The art of pleasing is more based on the art of seeming pleased than people think of, and she disarmed the prejudices of her enemies by the unaffected delight she appeared to take in themselves.

England never felt claustrophobic for me at all. I think it would feel more difficult for me if I lived in mainland Europe. America I think is really easy because Los Angeles has film stars everywhere and musicians and Santa Barbara a lot of people have homes there even if they don't live there. You are kind of inconsequential, no one cares.

I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality.

They are a very decent generous lot of people out here and they don't expect you to listen.... It's the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.

I think it's nice when everyone's happy. I'm that kind of person. But then sometimes you have people that are never happy, which also happened to me a little bit, people that always find ways to complain about everything. But if they're never happy, that's the way they are.

A man . . . must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow.

I actually don't think of whiteness and heterosexuality as 'the norm'. Maybe there are people who still do but none of them are close friends of mine.

I think the strangest thing probably is when I went to Japan, and I don't know what the hell I was eating, but there was this one thing that seemed to be in a lot of soups and things there - I always called it pond scum. It looked exactly like the green stuff that floats on top of a pond. I would say, "Oh my God, this has pond scum in it!" I would eat it, to be polite, because we were usually with Japanese people and I didn't want to gag or spit it out or anything. And I still don't know what it was.

I think that's the most dangerous kind of sexism: People don't realize it's there and we end up surreptitiously accepting it because it's just part of our culture. I've never experienced explicit, overt, confrontational sexism personally.

If all those people are getting wet to welcome me, surely the least I can do is get wet too!

People recognize me all the time. I think it's really nice. I don't mind it at all. It feels kind of surreal when people know who you are and I think that it's really cool.

We live in a world where in the movie you can disembowel someone in a youth hostel in Romania, but you can't show people having sex. I think it's weird.

The odd thing about tradition is, the longer it's been going, the more people seem to take it seriously - as though sheer passage of time makes something which to begin with was just made up, turns it into what people believe as a fact.

I have noticed several times that people don't think I know how to behave even when I'm trying as hard as I can.

I have heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, sculptureand painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish hurry.