Monica Ali

“I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.”

“Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.”

“The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful”

“Outside of interviews, I spend very little time thinking about myself. I spend time thinking about my writing and my children and other things that are pertinent.”

“I don't want to get hung up on what 'people,' that nebulous mass, think about me. That's the way to unhappiness, I think.”

“A new car is not going to change your life.”

“I rarely get a moment to myself, but I love the way that my agenda is dictated by the children, not my work.”

“Kids are naturally inventive and curious and creative, but most adults have had that beaten out of them. Writing is a form of play; you have to get rid of all those internal censors that we adults have, the things that say, 'Don't go there, that's not allowed.'”

“I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.”

“I like Beryl Bainbridge a great deal, and she is a writer who absolutely demands to be read a second, third, and fourth time. I admire her great courage in leaving so much unsaid and asking the reader to really engage her brain.”

“I started writing 'Brick Lane' when my children were two years and five months old. We were on holiday in the north of England when I was overtaken by a compulsion to start writing.”

“Some writers are more natural public performers than others; personally I find it quite strange giving interviews. But everyone has parts of their job that they like more than others. You can't complain if you get to do what you love doing most of the time, can you?”

“I guess there's a sort of cycle with writing books. There's all the researching and then the imagining and writing - which is the real job - and then there's always a period when the book comes out and you have to lift your head and venture out.”

“The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.”

“I always try to create conflict and drama in my books; it's the engine of the novel.”

“If you think you are powerless, then you are”

“They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug”

“You know how if you're born in a certain situation you always expect your life to run on a steady trajectory? I've never really had a sense of that. I assume that life is going to go up and down.”

“I wish I got a lie-in on Saturday mornings but I never do.”

“while she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.”