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" My publishers find me really challenging, as a lot of the time, I don't even know what I'm going to be writing about until I sit down to do it. "

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

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

" My parents' marriage was, on an aesthetic level, very pleasing to behold. "

" 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. "

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

" All my main characters have got bits of me, bits of my family, bits of my friends. "

" I always wanted to write psychological thrillers. "

" '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. "

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

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

" '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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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

" My mother had breast cancer when she was 39. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It wasn't until I was 23 and got married to a guy who was really bookish that I got completely hooked on reading and writing again. He had so many paperbacks, I didn't have to buy a book for four and a half years. "

" 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. "

" 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. "