Quotes from Lisa Jewell

If one of my romantic-comedy colleagues had written and directed 'Love Actually,' they would have been torn limb from limb. I thought it was awful, contrived, dreadful. I could see every twist and turn. I thought it was despicable. It was the writing that got me.

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 was brought up in the same house I was born in, and I lived there until I left home as an adult. I also went to a Catholic school, which was full of Irish girls whose parents never split up, so everyone I knew had these big family set-ups.

I must always, always have a box of Extra chewing gum in my bag because I have developed a terrible cheek-chewing compulsion. It's not only uncomfortable, but I look really weird when I'm doing it, and chewing gum is the only way I can stop myself.

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

Nick Hornby's a genius.

The only way you can write about a happy family in a drama is to make them unhappy.

In 1995, I was 27, and I completely got caught up in Blur and Oasis and the fashion of the time.

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.

I am the oldest of three girls and the only one not named after one of my father's ex-girlfriends.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.

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

Moving on is something that happens to you, not something you do. That's what people don't realize. Moving on is not proactive. It's organic. Be kind to yourself.

I know it sounds like it was all just a terrible disaster. Of course it does. Any situation involving four dead bodies is clearly far from ideal.

People are easier to deal with if they underestimate you.

People try and make out there's a greater purpose, a secret meaning, that it all means something. And it doesn't.

If you loveach other, whatever happens you can deal with it, you can work it out. Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that it's really not much fun having an adventure with someone you're not in love with.

Maybe it was too much of a coincidence to be a purely coincidence.

Like any challenge in life, once the mind was focused on the job in question, it became a simple matter of getting on with it, inch by inch, step by step.

The human memory is such a cruel, frustrating thing, the way it just discards things without asking permission, precious things. At least here, in my house, I have control over my memories.

Kim sometimes thinks that women practice being mothers on men until they become actual mothers, leaving behind a kind of vacancy.

When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it's like I go back into the dream.

you are the only woman I have ever met who I would want to be in a little house with, do you see? Other women make me want to get on boats and run away. You, you make me want to stay somewhere, so that I can see your face everyday. So that I can hold you everyday and watch you grow older. You make me want to be an adult man. You make me want to settle down.

You have anxiety?" "No. But I told them I did and they said I could bring my dog.