Quotes from Joanna Trollope

I am not a fan of the cupcake image. This idea that you can distract a girl with something frivolous like a cake or shoes or handbags, and she won't be a threat to men.

I've experienced huge kindness here, a great welcome and some very generous reviews without the snide social edge I often suffer from at home. I'm not patronized here either, which I much appreciate!

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

I'm an enormous fan of people who have had a lot of faith in themselves, and been on a tremendous journey.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

Finding the home had been dispiriting at best. And the best had been only very occasional. She had been appalled, and alarmed, by most of what she had seen, frightened enough to say

Sometimes you plant an acorn, and you plant it in good faith and instead of finding yourself with an admirable sturdy single oak tree, you're landed with a terrible mad forest that won't stop growing in all directions and develops an uncontrollable life of its own.

It's better to do something rather than talk about it. Don't you think?

Marianne would love watching paint dry, if Wills was watching it with her.

Being lucky, doesn't always make you happy, though, does it? Especially if people keep telling you how lucky you are, telling you to count your blessings.

like an emotional tooth-ache, bearable much of the time but with a propensity to flare up without notice and cause agony.

a dog would be comfortably companionable and an uncomplicated distraction from the inside of his own head, and that one could safely say, out loud

There is no need to say anything when you pray," the dean had heard Bishop Robert say at a recent confirmation in the city. "Just take time to look at God. And let Him look at you. That's all.

Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.

I always love writing about children.

You can't love a library of e-books. You can't furnish a room with e-books.

I'm an enormous fan of people who have had a lot of faith in themselves, and been on a tremendous journey.

The world's tragedy is that men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters.

My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are of equal importance.

All TV can do is capture the spirit of a book because the medium is so utterly different. But I'm very grateful for the readers that Masterpiece Theatre has undoubtedly brought me.

I'm actually rather orderly, although the way that I write is not.

I'm no lyrical stylist; you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as intellectual.