Lisa Jewell

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

“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.”

“She felt like a creature born to reside on the bottom of the ocean floor, dark and flat and half-blind, slowly rising through the icy water to the glittering light above.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I like the fact that my husband and I have been together for a long time and have a warm and colourful history together.”

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

“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.”

“I write in cafes, never at home. I cannot focus at home, am forever getting off my chair to do other things. In a cafe, I have to sit still, or I'll look a bit unhinged.”

“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 take the six weeks of the school summer holidays off because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to look back on my life one day and say, 'Damn, I wish I hadn't spent so much time with my children.'”

“My mother had breast cancer when she was 39.”

“My mother died in 2005. She was 61 years old.”

“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.”

“My husband loves having his own room.”

“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.”

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