Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English author Jane Green.
Last updated on December 24, 2024.
Jane Green, born in 1968, also known by her married name, Jane Green Warburg, is an English-born American author whose works of fiction are American and international best-sellers. As of 2014, Green's books had sold in excess of 10 million copies globally, with translations of them appearing in thirty-one languages, making her a leading author, globally, of commercial women's fiction. With regard to genres, she has been described as "[o]ne of the first of the chick lit" authors, and as a founding author of the form of fiction sometimes referred to as "mum lit."
I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.
I have a deep and passionate love of America. It is where I have always thought I would be happiest, and although I miss England desperately, I find that my heart definitely has its home over here.
The wonderful thing about being a writer is that everything that happens is grist to the mill.
I had always presumed that my first book would be published, but I never dreamt that I would write 15 bestsellers and have this wonderful life in America that I have entirely built for myself.
When I first started writing, I was living in England and I had that uniquely English sense of sarcasm, which has definitely seemed to have left me. I am a naturalized American and my sensibility has become far more American.
I have a business manager and a book-keeper who deals with our household bills. My husband and I sit down with her for a weekly report on how much money is going out, but I'm not terribly interested, and I don't have the patience for it.
I treated the first few books as a very long journalistic exercise. I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished.
I do know that I have always been one of life's observers, always standing slightly on the outside, watching.
A friend of mine suddenly announced she had written a novel and got a publishing deal; I thought, 'Hang on... if she can do it, I can bloody well do it, too.' That novel went to a bidding war, and went on to be a huge best-seller.
Twice a year, I take myself off to a self-imposed 'writer's retreat', staying at a small inn or on a friend's farm, where I am all alone and do nothing other than write.
I am not a big skier, but I love apres-ski wear and imagine I would look great in an all-white, fur-trimmed ski suit.
I am divorced, and one of the things I am tremendously grateful for is that my ex-husband and I made a decision to go through mediation. I knew a trial would drag on for years, would cost me everything, but worse, would be devastating for our four small children.
Sadly, I don't think books ever sell based on your name alone - the minute we make an assumption like that is the minute it all goes horribly wrong!
As someone who is displaced - I left London almost fifteen years ago to make Connecticut my home - I am drawn to stories about people who don't belong, whether physically or emotionally, and who find their families of choice in their friends.
I wanted to write stories I wanted to read, that I and my friends related to.
I have spent many a night in an Internet chat room, but not since I've been married.
Just as there are moments when the words flow and it feels like the easiest job in the world, there are many more when I think I have nothing to say, and my journalism training taught me that writing is a job, that you write whether you are inspired or not, and that the only way to unlock creativity is to write through it.
I write in the mornings once the kids have gone to school, taking my laptop and a coffee to a little writer's room in town where I plant noise-cancelling headphones on my head and get to work.
I learned that saying you love your friends isn't enough: that love is a verb - it requires Acts of Love. It is all about the doing, not the saying, and now I make a point, every day, of emailing or phoning or making a plan with those I love.
I now realise how liberating all-inclusive resorts are. No carrying huge handbags anywhere. No having to worry about purses being pinched. No totting up the price in your head and fretting that you've spent too much.
I show the people I love that I love them by gathering them in my kitchen and feeding them, so no surprise that most of my characters do the same thing.
For me, decorating perfection means eclectic styles and collections of beautiful things like pottery, pillboxes and match strikers.
I know plenty of people with kids in elite, private schools and had heard many stories. I have drifted into the homes of some of those very wealthy families in New York and am fascinated with the dynamic and how much freedom the children are given.
Chick lit was amazing, and I was thrilled to be part of it.
Ten years ago, you wrote a book and you never expected to find out anything about the author. Now with social media, everyone wants that connection. I think our readers want to be invited into our lives and brought on the journey and be part of this whole process.
I believe it is the flaws that make us interesting, our backgrounds, the hardships.
I think perhaps we all cook to feed some kind of hunger in ourselves. I am nourished by being surrounded by family and friends, by creating something delicious for them, by nurturing them.
I adore children, but I was never that interested in new born babies. It's a terrible thing to have to admit, and you're not supposed to think that way as a woman, but everyone promises it's different when you have your own. It wasn't for me, though.
Having struggled with food issues and eating disorders myself, particularly when I was younger, I've long been interested in using it within my books.
I have learned that it is imperative that I make time for my friends, that they demand to be as much a part of the mix as my family and my work, and perhaps more so, because they are not an inevitability.
I'd like to think I'm not quite so pretentious as to think my characters go off and live their lives once I've written the final page and switched the computer off.
I don't listen to anything when I'm writing. I need total quiet, which is astounding, given that I spent years working for a newspaper and having to write features surrounded by ringing phones and people shouting.
Taking a risk is always frightening, but I gave myself a set period of time and had enough money to see me through. I operated from the belief that things would be okay, that if I wasn't successful I would find myself a job, but either way, I would be fine.
Melanoma is not the most common of skin cancers, but it is the most dangerous if not found in the early stages.
I love getting out the house because writing is such a solitary business that even being at the library makes me feel part of the world.
I am very busy, life is very busy, and I was, I think, a somewhat lazy friend. I love them, I know they love me, but I didn't make much of an effort.
I started to think about the assumptions we make that everyone we meet operates under the same moral code, and how betrayed we feel when that isn't the case.
I have been incredibly lucky with my novels but I had absolutely no idea if anyone would be interested in a cookbook. So I started to think about self-publishing.
When you're working from home and you've got children, a big night out is going to Pizza Express down the road.
My e-books sales have overtaken everything else, so I think all the marketing has become very much driven by the author now because of social media.
What I want in a good beach read is sunshine, drama, easy-reading and transportation to another world and other people's problems.
Going through an illness and then death of a close friend has changed my attitudes to friendship enormously.
I spent the first summer after my diagnosis creeping about in giant sun hats and tents, cursing the sun, staying inside as much as possible. Now I am beginning to think the most important thing is educated sun exposure, because the melanomas of today are not caused by today's sunbathing, but by our childhoods and early adolescence.
Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.
The life of a bestselling novelist sounds like it ought to be spectacularly glamorous and fun, but in fact I spend most of my time incognito, and in fact were you to pass me in the street you would think I was just another dowdy suburban mom.
The bad news is that my thin melanoma has something called mitosis, which means the cancer cells are dividing and multiplying even as I write. My thin melanoma has already spread outside of the tumor and into the deep layers of skin.
I am Superwoman. I am the author of 15 novels, including one about cancer. I am not, however, someone who 'gets' cancer. I am a sun worshipper who never thought it could happen to me.
I have long been fascinated by our inclination to assume others we meet have the same moral code, similar values, and yet we can never be sure.
I always thought I'd be the quintessential Earth Mother, but when I had Harrison, I really wasn't the natural mother that I always thought I would be. I adore children, but I was never that interested in newborn babies.
What I've come to learn with self-publishing is that if you want to provide readers with something of equal quality, it requires the same amount of time and expense.
I have spent many a night in an Internet chat room, but not since I've been married. I don't do the chat rooms anymore, but I have become completely addicted to Ebay.
I read so much about men who aren't what they seem, and particularly stories written by women who found out their husbands had a slew of secrets they knew nothing about.
My training as a journalist was invaluable: when I worked on 'The Daily Express,' the editor would often ask for 1000 words within a couple of hours. I could not say I was not inspired. I had to get on with it.
As far back as I can remember, I have worshipped the sun. My skin is fair, but as the years have gone by, it has toughened and darkened. I now turn a rich golden brown every summer, but only after the first day of burning.
When I was a student, I had a part time job as a barmaid at a dodgy pub in Kent.
I think friendship is more important than love, but that love that grows out of friendship is the very best of all.
By the time I sat down to write 'Family Pictures,' I hadn't written anything in almost two years, and writing, I have discovered, is a muscle: if it isn't exercised, it will atrophy.
My husband has a cousin who discovered, in his fifties, that the man he thought was his father was actually not, and that he had not only a father he had never met, but brothers.
As a teenager, you are still entirely wrapped up in yourself.
I have a gorgeous office at home but tend not to write there because there are so many distractions.