Jane Green

“I am not a people pleaser. I am not a person who says things because she thinks it will make the other person happy, nor am I a person who offers things she cannot deliver because I want the other person to like me.”

“In my small, coastal New England town, an hour outside New York, I know many people who have dealt with cancer. I can reel off the names of at least 15 women I know, all in their 40s.”

“I now realise how liberating all-inclusive resorts are. No carrying huge handbags anywhere. No having to worry about purses being pinched. No totting up the price in your head and fretting that you've spent too much.”

“My e-books sales have overtaken everything else, so I think all the marketing has become very much driven by the author now because of social media.”

“I love getting out the house because writing is such a solitary business that even being at the library makes me feel part of the world.”

“Twice a year, I take myself off to a self-imposed 'writer's retreat', staying at a small inn or on a friend's farm, where I am all alone and do nothing other than write.”

“If you want to talk about it with someone, then I`m happy to listen, or try and help, but you should only tell me if you want to.”

“I am Superwoman. I am the author of 15 novels, including one about cancer. I am not, however, someone who 'gets' cancer. I am a sun worshipper who never thought it could happen to me.”

“You must work to live, not live to work.”

“For me, decorating perfection means eclectic styles and collections of beautiful things like pottery, pillboxes and match strikers.”

“I am very busy, life is very busy, and I was, I think, a somewhat lazy friend. I love them, I know they love me, but I didn't make much of an effort.”

“What I want in a good beach read is sunshine, drama, easy-reading and transportation to another world and other people's problems.”

“I have spent many a night in an Internet chat room, but not since I've been married. I don't do the chat rooms anymore, but I have become completely addicted to Ebay.”

“When I first started writing, I was living in England and I had that uniquely English sense of sarcasm, which has definitely seemed to have left me. I am a naturalized American and my sensibility has become far more American.”

“Shock doesn't hit all at once. I have learned.”

“I believe it is the flaws that make us interesting, our backgrounds, the hardships.”

“She would talk to him in the car, ask him something, then turn on the radio and find her question answered by the lyrics of a song; pick up a book and turn to a random page, to find the words that were exactly what she needed to hear. There is no such thing as coincidence, she would think, blowing a kiss of thanks to the heavens.”

“I think friendship is more important than love, but that love that grows out of friendship is the very best of all.”

“I have only ever been to Antigua to hop over to other Caribbean islands. The airport had always seemed perfectly lovely, but I'm a quiet sort of holiday girl, and Antigua always seemed big.”

“For me, 'Bookends' marks the start of my foray into commercial fiction, away from what has always been thought of as more traditional chick lit - single girl in the city trips around in Manolos looking for Mr. Right.”