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

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" People with big ideas worry. They lie awake at night and fret as they try to climb up the social or financial ladder. They probably feel proud of themselves for what they've achieved, but I'm proud of the fact that I've done very little - and hence have little to worry about - and I've still got somewhere. "

" 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.' "

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

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

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

" My husband loves having his own room. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Flowers would be wasted on me. I don't like valentines. I don't need gifts. I'm a pragmatic romantic. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" When I was a little girl, I was a real, drippy bookworm. But when I went into fashion, I stopped reading. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" '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. "

" For a very long time, I thought everyone I met through the process of getting an agent and a publishing deal had made a mistake. When they agreed to pay me for the book, I thought they would ask me for the money back. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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