Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

Related Quotes:

" 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?' "

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

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

" I knew I wasn't the sort of person who could do a full-time job and write in the evening and at weekends. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I don't think my first book was chick lit. "

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

" Nick Hornby's a genius. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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?' "

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

" '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. "

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

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

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

" My husband loves having his own room. "

" 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. "

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

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