Top 76 Quotes & Sayings by Lisa Jewell

Ever since 'Single White Female,' the 1990 novel which was turned into a supremely scary film, the idea of a seemingly normal woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants has become an abiding literary trope.

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

Writing a book is not easy.

My mother was born on February 8, 1944, in Lucknow, India. Her father, Albert, was half-Indian and half-Portuguese.

I changed my mind about being a famous pop star when I realised that it meant I'd never be able to get on the Tube again.

The older I get, the more I love psychological thrillers.

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

Agents and publishers are always looking for something 'different,' a fresh viewpoint and a new voice, not just re-hashed versions of stuff that's gone before.

All my main characters have got bits of me, bits of my family, bits of my friends.

Every time I've written a book, I'm like, 'Oh, it's so different from the last one. Are they going to like it?'

No man ever fell in love with me for the way I fill out a Lycra dress.

If you can start and finish a book, then you're already a million miles ahead of all those people who talk about wanting to write a book.

When we were kids, we couldn't wait to have our own rooms, not to have to share anymore. And that is what I love about having my own bedroom. It is mine. My sleep is mine. Both pillows are mine. If I wake up, it is me who has woken me up... It makes me feel like a grown-up. I love it.

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

There's a weird contrast between my usual daily routine and then my book coming out. It's like someone's just suddenly opened the curtains in a dark room, and everyone's looking at you.

Sometimes you need to be shaken out of a situation.

My husband loves having his own room.

Don't do a hard sell or try to tell the agent that you're going to be a bestseller or the next John Grisham. This goes down very badly. If your work is good, then they are skilled enough to know this within a few pages.

My publishers find me really challenging, as a lot of the time, I don't even know what I'm going to be writing about until I sit down to do it.

When I travel, I can leave everything at home apart from books. I curate my holiday reading rigorously and would be devastated if I found I'd left one at home.

'Ralph's Party' was supposed to be a psychological thriller, but I fell in love with all my characters and wanted only the best for them.

I look about my house and see there are lots of lovely things in it, but I constantly buy more.

Everyone thinks they've got a book inside them.

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

I don't really get into a writing routine until March or April, when I'll write a few hundred words a day, often in a cafe in the morning after the school run.

I think that not being proactive is a good thing. I like life to unfold on its own.

I write in cafes, never at home. I cannot focus at home, am forever getting off my chair to do other things. In a cafe, I have to sit still, or I'll look a bit unhinged.

I knew I wasn't the sort of person who could do a full-time job and write in the evening and at weekends.

It wasn't until I was 23 and got married to a guy who was really bookish that I got completely hooked on reading and writing again. He had so many paperbacks, I didn't have to buy a book for four and a half years.

I married someone I didn't love. I was too polite to say no.

Whenever I watch any kind of competition, my immediate reaction when they call out the name of the winner is to look at the loser.

People say 'chick lit,' and what they mean is 'crap.' And so even though you might sell 100,000 copies of a book, you're never going to win a prize. These are books that people don't just read, they devour them - they stay up into the early hours because they want to devour them.

My parents' marriage was, on an aesthetic level, very pleasing to behold.

I tried to write about my first marriage in a fictional version but got two pages into it and realised it was too personal. Then I came up with an old-fashioned love triangle, which became the plot for 'Ralph's Party.'

I was made redundant from a job as a PA in a shirt-making company in 1996. I was devastated. I had been there for three years, and it was a job I really liked.

'Ralph's Party' was a romantic comedy, and at the end of it, the two main characters, Ralph and Jen, kiss for the first time and think they're going to be happy together. Then, 10 years later, I wrote a sequel in which they've been together for 10 years and are about to split up.

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 never had one of those glorious young bodies that make older men and women weep. So I don't tend to look back with nostalgia or yearn for what I've lost. Because it was never all that.

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.

Publishers have published women's fiction into a corner, and now we are all trying to punch our way out of it. We just have to write the best books we possibly can and hope that, once the pink covers and Bridget Jones have faded from memory, we might finally be allowed just to be called writers.

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.

People with big ideas worry. They lie awake at night and fret as they try to climb up the social or financial ladder. They probably feel proud of themselves for what they've achieved, but I'm proud of the fact that I've done very little - and hence have little to worry about - and I've still got somewhere.

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

Every brilliant book I read is an influence and an inspiration. As is every brilliant movie I watch and every brilliant box set.

My father, Anthony, was a textile agent who sold fabric in the West End and was away a lot. He was very glamorous. When he first met my mum, he swept her off into this big, social world.

I take the six weeks of the school summer holidays off because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to look back on my life one day and say, 'Damn, I wish I hadn't spent so much time with my children.'

My mother's childhood was complex, disjointed, and disturbing. As children, we would gather round and ask her to tell us again and again The Story of Her Childhood. It was Grimmsian, Andersenesque: a classic fairy tale replete with goodies and baddies.

My marriage is far from perfect. We're not hand-holdy and soft. We are snippy and bickery. We sleep in separate beds because we have no tolerance of each other's night-time idiosyncrasies.

That whole idea of chick lit being a thing that you just lump all the commercial female writers into - it went on for years.I'd switch on the radio, and I'd hear, 'Two female authors are here to discuss chick lit - is it dead?' and I'd think, 'Argh, no, not again. Are we seriously still having this conversation?'

When I was a little girl, I was a real, drippy bookworm. But when I went into fashion, I stopped reading.

There are people out there who would enjoy my books but wouldn't pick them up because they think it's not going to be for them. I find it infuriating.There's a lot more going on in my books than just romance.

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.

My mother died in 2005. She was 61 years old.

Nick Hornby's a genius.

Flowers would be wasted on me. I don't like valentines. I don't need gifts. I'm a pragmatic romantic.

I am a terrible, terrible typist. I could not have been a writer in the age of typewriters.

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.

I like the fact that my husband and I have been together for a long time and have a warm and colourful history together.

A strange side effect of sudden success is the sense that if you can succeed in one field, then it might well be worth trying to succeed in another.

I always wanted to write psychological thrillers.