Top 40 Lisa Jewell Quotes

My mother had breast cancer when she was 39.

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

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.

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

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 always wanted to write psychological thrillers.

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.

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

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

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

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

My husband loves having his own room.

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

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.

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.

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.

If you feel that your father was lacking as a husband, it affects your own choice of man.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?’

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

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.

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.

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.’

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.

Everyone thinks they’ve got a book inside them.

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.

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.

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 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.’

‘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.

If you have a calling, you need to let it find you.

My first husband dragged me out of London and made me live in the suburbs in Surrey – not where you want to be when you’re 23.

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.

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

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

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.