Quotes from Lisa Jewell

she was only here because she didn't have the guts to be anywhere else. Because she felt like the last guest at an unsuccessful party, too guilt-ridden to leave.

She'd been acting the role of the scary woman for years because deep down inside she was scared. Scared of being alone. Scared that she'd had all her chances at happiness and blown each and every one of them.

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.

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.

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.

My father was a self-employed textile agent, and the shop below his office was an art gallery.

That's always the way in life: the longer you leave things, the harder they are to do.

'Ralph's Party' was supposed to be a psychological thriller, but I fell in love with all my characters and wanted only the best for them.

The older I get, the more I love psychological thrillers.

I always wanted to write psychological thrillers.

I was made redundant from a job as a PA in a shirt-making company in 1996. I was devastated. I had been there for three years, and it was a job I really liked.

My marriage is far from perfect. We're not hand-holdy and soft. We are snippy and bickery. We sleep in separate beds because we have no tolerance of each other's night-time idiosyncrasies.

When I travel, I can leave everything at home apart from books. I curate my holiday reading rigorously and would be devastated if I found I'd left one at home.

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.

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

I don't really get into a writing routine until March or April, when I'll write a few hundred words a day, often in a cafe in the morning after the school run.

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.

'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.

Don't do a hard sell or try to tell the agent that you're going to be a bestseller or the next John Grisham. This goes down very badly. If your work is good, then they are skilled enough to know this within a few pages.

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.'

If you feel that your father was lacking as a husband, it affects your own choice of man.

People with big ideas worry. They lie awake at night and fret as they try to climb up the social or financial ladder. They probably feel proud of themselves for what they've achieved, but I'm proud of the fact that I've done very little - and hence have little to worry about - and I've still got somewhere.

If you can start and finish a book, then you're already a million miles ahead of all those people who talk about wanting to write a book.

I changed my mind about being a famous pop star when I realised that it meant I'd never be able to get on the Tube again.