That's when the idea for Mad About the Boy arrived. It wasn't even a Bridget [Jones] story initially - then I realized I was writing in Bridget's voice and it grew from there into a Bridget novel.
As Bridget writes to her son, in Bridget Jones' Baby - "if you just keep calm and keep your spirits up, things have a habit of turning out all right, just as they did for me."
So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, with thirty looming on the horizon. Drunk. Fat. Alone. Unloved. And, worst of all, a cliche, Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones put together, which was probably about how much I weighed.
For me, writing Bridget's [Jones] stories is an instinctive, organic thing, which tends to happen more by accident than design.
Though with Bridget Jones's Baby: the Diaries, I'd like to make it clear that I did not ever get pregnant by two men.
My sons named her Bridget because that way they always had their sister, Bridget, with them. People thought we were nuts because on the phone they'd hear us say, "Bridget, sit!"
More than two years after Mad About the Boy was published, the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries ] movie started coming together. I felt better about the material, and found myself writing a letter from Bridget to her son: explaining the original story of how he came to be, from his own Mum.
Bridget Jones has a lot to answer for.
Every girl wants to play Bridget Jones.
All of us feel, I think, that our experiences can be the worst possible thing you can go through and that we're alone in it, which is isolating and intense and insurmountable. But we can get over it.
I think that's the whole point of Bridget Jones. It's all about that it's okay to fail.
On his fight scene with Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones: It was a delicious experience.
In terms of Bridget [Jones] I honestly don't know. One thing I can say for sure is that all of these stories have been an honest, instinctive expression of something I felt or observed at the time. I would never cynically think "Oh that would sell well next."
Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
I have been waiting a long time to see what's next for Bridget Jones, and I am beyond thrilled she's back.
When 'Ally McBeal' started, I went, 'Oh, my God.' It's like what I was doing. 'Bridget Jones' was in the same vein. I identify with all of them.