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

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" Getting married young was the worst experience of my life. It was horrible - really horrible. "

" I never had one of those glorious young bodies that make older men and women weep. So I don't tend to look back with nostalgia or yearn for what I've lost. Because it was never all that. "

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

" 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.' "

" A strange side effect of sudden success is the sense that if you can succeed in one field, then it might well be worth trying to succeed in another. "

" Don't do a hard sell or try to tell the agent that you're going to be a bestseller or the next John Grisham. This goes down very badly. If your work is good, then they are skilled enough to know this within a few pages. "

" No man ever fell in love with me for the way I fill out a Lycra dress. "

" When I travel, I can leave everything at home apart from books. I curate my holiday reading rigorously and would be devastated if I found I'd left one at home. "

" Every brilliant book I read is an influence and an inspiration. As is every brilliant movie I watch and every brilliant box set. "

" My father was a self-employed textile agent, and the shop below his office was an art gallery. "

" For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine. "

" I would never, for the sake of the story or a twist, have a character do something that they just wouldn't do. I really couldn't. I'd rather miss out on the twist. "

" You feel undervalued when you write the kind of fiction I write. "

" I married someone I didn't love. I was too polite to say no. "

" 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. "

" There are people out there who would enjoy my books but wouldn't pick them up because they think it's not going to be for them. I find it infuriating.There's a lot more going on in my books than just romance. "

" If you have a calling, you need to let it find you. "

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

" I always wanted to write psychological thrillers. "

" 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?' "

" My father, Anthony, was a textile agent who sold fabric in the West End and was away a lot. He was very glamorous. When he first met my mum, he swept her off into this big, social world. "

" I think that not being proactive is a good thing. I like life to unfold on its own. "

" My mother was born on February 8, 1944, in Lucknow, India. Her father, Albert, was half-Indian and half-Portuguese. "

" There's something uniquely unsettling about the unhinged woman on a single-minded mission. Especially when she's the last person you ever imagined to harbour a dark and seething soul. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The only way you can write about a happy family in a drama is to make them unhappy. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My husband loves having his own room. "