Quotes from Laurie Graham

I've always jealously guarded my feminine mystique. I've been married twice, and neither of my husbands has ever seen me put my face on.

Once, every woman owned a small mirrored compact, and it was considered normal - sophisticated even - to flip it open to discreetly check for things like nose-glow or lipstick smudge.

Even professional, paid carers aren't always models of saintly behaviour - and they know they can knock off at the end of their shift to go home, take an uninterrupted shower, and have a normal conversation with someone.

There is something very easy about women's friendships that you don't see as often with men. We all know examples of this, when women will just call each other up or drop a line, not with anything specific to say.

The thing about praising beauty is that good looks are an unforgiving task- master, a Forth Bridge of a maintenance job. The passing years present their accounts. Younger models become available.

The terror dementia sufferers must feel is unimaginable, but the techniques they use to hide their difficulties - the ducking and diving and keeping the world laughing - are perfectly understandable.

I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person.

I almost always use first person voice in my novels. It has its limitations, but it gives a sense of immediacy that's hard to create with an anonymous, all-seeing narrator.

As well as writing novels and doing short-order journalism, I am also the full-time carer of my husband, who has Alzheimer's. Each day feels like a race that must be run.

Dementia is quite unlike cancer or heart disease or any of those other conditions where you bargain with God for a cure or even just a bit more time.

I have a magpie mind, by which I mean I see and hear little things - photos, fragments of conversation - and store them away for future use.

I speak pretty fluent American, though I do so with a strong British accent, and I love America: The scale and the variety of it are astonishing to someone not born there, and I'm convinced that its energy and generosity have somehow rubbed off on me and affected my writing. For the better.

My research process doesn't vary much. I do a little reading to establish a timeline and decide how I'm going to approach the story.

Far more than dreading ending up in a care home myself, I dread having to put my husband in one.