Rachel Joyce

“The people he met, the places he passed, were all steps in his journey, and he kept a place inside his heart for each of them.”

“Even if we don't believe in church or God, we still believe in things that are bigger than ourselves. We need to believe in those things because if we can't be open to what we don't know, there's no hope for any of us.”

“I went to see Dad in hospital after he had gone through one particularly grueling operation. I walked into the room where he was recovering, and he was sitting up in a chair, wearing his shirt and tie. That was after eight hours of surgery. I found that so moving.”

“On television, it's all just shiny, successful people, and so I feel somebody has to wave a flag for the ordinary people who are not quite sure that they are getting it right.”

“The fact was, it was safer to stay uninvolved. He was perfectly fine with emotions, so long as they belonged to other people. Oh, he tried relationships after Peg's death, for a while he really tried, but he couldn't bear to get closed ... [it was easier] to disconnect from that part of life and turn his back on love altogether.Easier to find what he needed in music.”

“Sometimes you cannot clear the past completely. You must live alongside your sorrow.”

“But maybe it's what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.”

“Jazz was about the spaces between notes. It was about what happened when you listened to the thing inside you. The gaps and the cracks. Because that was where life really happened, when you were brave enough to free-fall.”

“I have written stories since I was a child.”

“I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.”

“It was a perfect spring day. The air was sweet and gentle and the sky stretched high, an intense blue. Harold was certain that the last time he had peered through the net drapes of Fossebridge Road (his home), the trees and hedges were dark bones and spindles against the skyline; yet now that he was out, and on his feet, it was as if everywhere he looked, the fields, gardens, trees, and hedgerows and exploded with growth. A canopy of sticky young leaves clung to the branches above him. There were startling yellow clouds of forsythia, trails of purple aubrietia; a young willow shook in a fountain of silver. The first of the potato shoots fingered through the soil, and already tiny buds hung from the gooseberry and currant shrubs like the earrings Maureen used to wear. The abundance of new life was enough to make him giddy.”

“I am not expecting anyone to feel sorry for me, but when friends ask how it feels to be a debut novelist who has also been long listed for the Man Booker prize, I have to admit that my response has confused me. I am so overwhelmed, so delighted, so honoured and so surprised, I have come out in a violent cold.”

“I find that very appealing: the blurring of the lines between what's funny and what's tragic. And what's ordinary and what's not - the big things in the small things.”

“Harold believed his journey was truly beginning. He had thought it started the moment he decided to walk to Berwick, but he saw now that he had been naïve. Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He had faced his shortcomings and overcame them, and so the real business of walking was happening only now.”

“'Perfect' is about a set-up that looks perfect from the outside - beautiful country house, beautiful wife and mother, everything where it should be - and the deep fissures that, in fact, lie beneath that. 'Perfect' was partly a response to the shock of my first book, 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry,' being a success.”

“I think I'm somebody who takes praise with a very big - probably too big - pinch of salt.”

“I think of myself as a very ordinary person. I like writing about the juxtaposition between people: the beauty of them at times and then the banal, everyday context in which we find ourselves.”

“For me, writing is such an escape, and I felt very lucky to have this to run away to.”

“The story of Harold Fry and his unlikely pilgrimage began as an afternoon play for radio. For many years, I have been writing plays and adapting novels for 'Woman's Hour' and the 'Classic' series. So this was originally a three-hander play, broadcast one sunny afternoon on BBC Radio 4.”

“We are quick to stick labels on others - especially those who don't fit in with the norm. 'Harold Fry' is about a broken marriage; 'Perfect' is about a broken person. They are both about finding kindness where you least expect it.”