Quotes from Laurie Graham

My preferred style is to write in first person, so I always have to play around with possible narrator voices until I find something that works.

None of us wants to be reminded that dementia is random, relentless, and frighteningly common.

The word 'carer' makes me think of someone with a nylon overall and a long list of 'clients' to wash before she finishes her shift. A companion was something unique. A kind of live-in friend.

People invade your space and offend your sensibilities because, to be plain, they couldn't care less about you.

I love working fictional characters into a piece of history. It plays to my strengths, which are characterization and dialogue, and assists me in my admitted weakness, plot.

In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked.

I was fascinated by the culture clash between England and America in the 1950s. My first memories are of being a girl in those post-war years when things were really pretty grim. It wasn't like that in America, which was real boom time.

I have but one rule at my table. You may leave your cabbage, but you'll sit still and behave until I've eaten mine.

Sundown is often the worst time of day for people with dementia. They can become restless and difficult.

You can think a thing over many times and still have no idea how you'll answer the question, if ever it's asked.

I hadn't realized till then how a thought, once you have thought it, can never be laid to rest. It may lay low, but any time it can pop right up again, put certain words in your mouth.

It's a funny things about human nature. Nobody ever wonders why they've got a healthy brother or a perfect kiddie. Anything goes wrong, though, we soon start why, oh why...

Fruity said, "It went in one ear and out the other." Baba said, "Not surprising. There's very little in between to stop it.

How difficult. A prince who behaves like a husband and a husband who's starting to behave like a prince.

But still, it was too awful a moment. A man should never walk out on his wife while they have company.

Tomorrow we're to visit the Dardanelles. Jack Aird speaks of them as though I should know them, but I really don't recall them. One meets so many people.

King Boris is going to meet us with his train, which he actually drives himself. What hard times some of these little kings have fallen upon.

I always complained about my mother's stony heart. Turns out I'm built just the same.

Audrey used to pass her some of her story books, but Gayle was no reader, not much or a homemaker neither, though Betty did try giving her a few lessons. I reckon Gayle lived on potato chips and Dr Pepper, and when Okey was home, they just lived on love.

KATH PHARAOH'S WAY WITH EEL'S The young ones are the best, before the turn yellow. Put them in a pillowcase with a handful of salt and swish that around in a tub of water till the sliminess is gone. Fry them in bacon fat. They're soon done. If you can't get elvers, then get an old boy, eight or nine years old. After you've skinned him, cut him into two-inch pieces and bake him on a grid. That needs a good hot flame. Nice with piccalilli.

The only people don't suffer those are the ones who never do anything

Looking back don't interest me. Today's what matters. And tomorrow, if we're lucky.

There's something about Betty, like she's a great big empty space waiting to suck in trouble. There'll always be a story.... One of these days Betty's going to get up and find a line of starving Africans outside her door. You can depend on it.

The wheels of publishing never slow down.