Top 80 David Walliams Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “All you can do in this life is follow your dreams. Otherwise you’re just wasting your time.”

— David Walliams

2. “It was impossible to sleep. Anxiety stopped me from falling asleep; depression woke me up.”

— David Walliams

3. “A bully can only make you feel bad about yourself if you let them.”

— David Walliams

4. “Walliamsictionary.”

— David Walliams

5. “Reality always outstrips fiction. Whatever you make up, something more incredible always pops up in real life.”

— David Walliams

6. “It’s strange how sometimes you can be so happy it goes all the way round to sadness.”

— David Walliams

7. “Never complain, even if you are in great pain.”

— David Walliams

8. “I just want to be happy, have kids, enjoy my life, help others and create some good work.”

— David Walliams

9. “Children’s books are often seen as the poor relation of literature. But children are just as demanding as adult readers, if not more so. I should know. I’m a children’s writer myself.”

— David Walliams

10. “That life is precious. Every moment is precious. We should be kind to each other. While there is still time.”

— David Walliams

11. “I still enjoy my life, and I feel like I’ve achieved enough things that if I never did anything again, I’d feel confident that I’d still have made my mark in some way. But maybe the self-loathing bit is the element that makes you strive for more. Makes you strive to be better.”

— David Walliams

12. “When I was a child I devoured every book I could get my hands on. I loved losing myself in colourful and dramatic stories – and my absolute favourite was ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.’ Everything about it electrified me, and when I re-read Roald Dahl’s books as an adult it surprised me.”

— David Walliams

13. “I have a pathological fear of being on my own. When I’m with my own thoughts, I start to unravel myself, and I start to think really dark thoughts, self-destructive thoughts.”

— David Walliams

14. “People think writing a children’s book is something you could do in an afternoon but it’s actually really hard.”

— David Walliams

15. “I don’t think comedy is necessarily an attack. It’s finding humour in life. I don’t think if you’re making a joke about something you’re automatically demeaning it.”

— David Walliams

16. “All human life can be found in an airport.”

— David Walliams

17. “I don’t have a fear factor. Well, not much of one. And I’m willing to risk quite a lot – as a comedian, you’re always risking a lot. You’re risking failure, especially if you’re improvising and going on TV shows trying to make comedy out of thin air. That is quite a risky business.”

— David Walliams

18. “I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it’s over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.”

— David Walliams

19. “Definitely I love women, I love being around women, I find them incredible and intoxicating, and I’ve never had that feeling I get with women with a man.”

— David Walliams

20. “I haven’t put much effort into my personal life and blithely believe it will turn out all right in the end.”

— David Walliams

21. “It’s easier not to make a particular joke in case it offends. But every joke will offend someone, and I’ve always believed that the audience is bigger than one person. The danger is that things will become bland.”

— David Walliams

22. “I was quite fat as a kid. And swimming is a sport you can enjoy whatever size you are. If you’re fat, running is a pain. I’m not really built for running.”

— David Walliams

23. “No more watching that show Small England or whatever it’s called where those two idiots dress up as ‘laydees’. It’s a bad influence.”

— David Walliams

24. “Pizza Hut, and then Pizza Express, before seeking sanctuary in the doorway of a Domino’s Pizza.”

— David Walliams

25. “Speeding around his own private racetrack in his own Formula One racing car. Some.”

— David Walliams

26. “A bronze bust of some dictator or other, who had gone by the name of “Trump.”

— David Walliams

27. “The Midnight Gang.”

— David Walliams

28. “I’m terribly attention-seeking. It’s very different once you get all this attention, though. Because then you want to control it. And you can’t exactly.”

— David Walliams

29. “My favourite restaurant of all time is Mildreds on London’s Lexington Street. It’s a little vegetarian restaurant and is really fun and healthy, too. It was the first place I went to in London and really liked. That was 20 years ago, and it is still my favourite.”

— David Walliams

30. “Nathaniel Septimus Ernest Bertram Lysander Tybalt Zacharias Edmund Alexander Humphrey Percy Quentin Tristan Augustus Bartholomew Tarquin Imogen Sebastian Theodore Clarence Smythe.”

— David Walliams

31. “In his dreams he would be a hero. In his life he felt like a zero.”

— David Walliams

32. “We’ve got 12-year-old boys dressing up as transvestites.”

— David Walliams

33. “I thrive off the company of others, I love being sociable.”

— David Walliams

34. “Sometimes you meet people who can’t swim. And I always think: ‘Oh my God, that’s extraordinary.’ For me, it’s always been a treat I just feel really happy in the water.”

— David Walliams

35. “I was depressed as a child. I found it hard to make friends. My favourite thing was locking myself in the bathroom and practising comedy routines.”

— David Walliams

36. “All our lives are hard in one way or another... But listen to me... We need to be kind to each other, and stick together, OK? This place is tough enough without you making my life a misery.”

— David Walliams

37. “I think all those rules are boring. About what people can and can’t wear. Surely everyone should be able to wear whatever they like?”

— David Walliams

38. “When I want comfort food, I buy Maltesers. I like all chocolates, but especially those. You can eat them, and because they’re so light, you can convince yourself that they are not actually that fattening.”

— David Walliams

39. “Happy Birthday, Dad!” exclaimed Dennis and John excitedly. “I don’t like birthdays,” said Dad.”

— David Walliams

40. “Ricky Gervais would have you believe otherwise, but Sacha Baron Cohen is the most successful British comedian in the world.”

— David Walliams

41. “I had a very happy childhood, but I wasn’t that happy a child. I liked being alone and creating characters and voices. I think that’s when your creativity is developed, when you’re young. I liked the world of the imagination because it was an easy place to go to.”

— David Walliams

42. “I used to have a silk dressing gown an uncle bought in Japan and when I came downstairs in it, my dad used to call me Davinia. There was never embarrassment about that kind of thing. My sister used to dress me up a lot. She thought I was a little doll.”

— David Walliams

43. “I’ve noticed that once you leave London you do kind of become a bit more famous. People in London are a bit too cool for school. It’s not so unusual to see someone from London in the street. But outside of London people are a bit more excited to see you and come out and support you.”

— David Walliams

44. “They may have only had one pence to spend, but their hearts beamed with gold.”

— David Walliams

45. “But being a child, he’d never been asked for his opinion.”

— David Walliams

46. “Run to the local bookshop and buy a copy of How to Learn Mind Control in Ten Minutes by Professor Stephen Haste and very quickly hypnotise Miss Spite into thinking he had already given her his homework. Disguise himself as a plate of spaghetti Bolognese. Bribe the school nurse into telling Miss Spite he had died.”

— David Walliams

47. “There’s something about being a comedian that means you have to not be scared of failing because failing is part of the process.”

— David Walliams

48. “There’s a sort of magic and music to comedy. Some words, some numbers even, are funnier than others. A Caramac bar, for instance, is funnier than a Milky Way.”

— David Walliams

49. “But children nowadays don’t believe in magic. They are forever watching TV and playing computer games. They never look to the skies any more.”

— David Walliams

50. “I don’t have a lot to share with other men. My heart sinks when I get into a taxi and someone starts talking to me about football.”

— David Walliams