Lisa Jewell Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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?’

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

Sometimes you need to be shaken out of a situation.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Writing a book is not easy.

My husband loves having his own room.

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

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.

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.

Nick Hornby’s a genius.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Everyone thinks they’ve got a book inside them.

I always wanted to write psychological thrillers.

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.

I don’t think my first book was chick lit.