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" Every time I've written a book, I'm like, 'Oh, it's so different from the last one. Are they going to like it?' "

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" Sometimes you need to be shaken out of a situation. "

" I was made redundant from a job as a PA in a shirt-making company in 1996. I was devastated. I had been there for three years, and it was a job I really liked. "

" My marriage is far from perfect. We're not hand-holdy and soft. We are snippy and bickery. We sleep in separate beds because we have no tolerance of each other's night-time idiosyncrasies. "

" The older I get, the more I love psychological thrillers. "

" In 1995, I was 27, and I completely got caught up in Blur and Oasis and the fashion of the time. "

" I tried to write about my first marriage in a fictional version but got two pages into it and realised it was too personal. Then I came up with an old-fashioned love triangle, which became the plot for 'Ralph's Party.' "

" People say 'chick lit,' and what they mean is 'crap.' And so even though you might sell 100,000 copies of a book, you're never going to win a prize. These are books that people don't just read, they devour them - they stay up into the early hours because they want to devour them. "

" Whenever I watch any kind of competition, my immediate reaction when they call out the name of the winner is to look at the loser. "

" I am the oldest of three girls and the only one not named after one of my father's ex-girlfriends. "

" There's a weird contrast between my usual daily routine and then my book coming out. It's like someone's just suddenly opened the curtains in a dark room, and everyone's looking at you. "

" If you feel that your father was lacking as a husband, it affects your own choice of man. "

" If one of my romantic-comedy colleagues had written and directed 'Love Actually,' they would have been torn limb from limb. I thought it was awful, contrived, dreadful. I could see every twist and turn. I thought it was despicable. It was the writing that got me. "

" I look about my house and see there are lots of lovely things in it, but I constantly buy more. "

" Nick Hornby's a genius. "

" 'Ralph's Party' was a romantic comedy, and at the end of it, the two main characters, Ralph and Jen, kiss for the first time and think they're going to be happy together. Then, 10 years later, I wrote a sequel in which they've been together for 10 years and are about to split up. "

" When we were kids, we couldn't wait to have our own rooms, not to have to share anymore. And that is what I love about having my own bedroom. It is mine. My sleep is mine. Both pillows are mine. If I wake up, it is me who has woken me up... It makes me feel like a grown-up. I love it. "

" Agents and publishers are always looking for something 'different,' a fresh viewpoint and a new voice, not just re-hashed versions of stuff that's gone before. "

" Everyone thinks they've got a book inside them. "

" My mother died in 2005. She was 61 years old. "

" That whole idea of chick lit being a thing that you just lump all the commercial female writers into - it went on for years.I'd switch on the radio, and I'd hear, 'Two female authors are here to discuss chick lit - is it dead?' and I'd think, 'Argh, no, not again. Are we seriously still having this conversation?' "

" My husband loves having his own room. "

" Publishers have published women's fiction into a corner, and now we are all trying to punch our way out of it. We just have to write the best books we possibly can and hope that, once the pink covers and Bridget Jones have faded from memory, we might finally be allowed just to be called writers. "

" I always wanted to write psychological thrillers. "

" Ever since 'Single White Female,' the 1990 novel which was turned into a supremely scary film, the idea of a seemingly normal woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants has become an abiding literary trope. "

" My first husband dragged me out of London and made me live in the suburbs in Surrey - not where you want to be when you're 23. "

" I was brought up in the same house I was born in, and I lived there until I left home as an adult. I also went to a Catholic school, which was full of Irish girls whose parents never split up, so everyone I knew had these big family set-ups. "

" I am a terrible, terrible typist. I could not have been a writer in the age of typewriters. "

" 'Ralph's Party' was supposed to be a psychological thriller, but I fell in love with all my characters and wanted only the best for them. "

" If you can start and finish a book, then you're already a million miles ahead of all those people who talk about wanting to write a book. "

" My mother's childhood was complex, disjointed, and disturbing. As children, we would gather round and ask her to tell us again and again The Story of Her Childhood. It was Grimmsian, Andersenesque: a classic fairy tale replete with goodies and baddies. "