Jane Green Quotations

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 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 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.

I have a gorgeous office at home but tend not to write there because there are so many distractions.

Going through an illness and then death of a close friend has changed my attitudes to friendship enormously.

Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

As a teenager, you are still entirely wrapped up in yourself.

Chick lit was amazing, and I was thrilled to be part of it.

For me, decorating perfection means eclectic styles and collections of beautiful things like pottery, pillboxes and match strikers.

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 not someone who's very good at looking after herself, and I am also not someone who goes on holiday very often.

I consider myself pretty fearless, but the one thing I have always been frightened of is cancer.

I do know that I have always been one of life's observers, always standing slightly on the outside, watching.

When you're working from home and you've got children, a big night out is going to Pizza Express down the road.

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 no longer think you can live without passion.

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.

Every time my dreams threaten to become reality, something always happens and I end up alone.

Life, Steffi has learned, carries on around the pain, making room for it, absorbing it until it becomes part of the daily fabric, wrapping itself around you and lodging itself in your heart.

Jules has always been one of those women that men go crazy about because she has enough self-confidence to say this is me, take it or leave it. And, invariably, they take it. Or at least try to. They love the fact that she doesn’t wear makeup. That her clothes, on her tiny, petite frame, are a mishmash of whatever she happens to pull out of the wardrobe that morning. That her laugh is huge and infectious, and, most of all, that she listens. She loves life, and people, and makes time for them, and even before Jamie came along men were forever falling in love with her.

As Carrie Fisher once said in a film, everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humour.

Marriage should be about fun,” she says gently. “It’s about friendship, and laughter, and trust, and fun. If it’s not fun, if you take it all too seriously, what’s the point? You know I’ve been with Andy for fifteen years, and the reason it still works is because he’s my best friend and he still makes me laugh. Admittedly, not all the time, and often we get completely bogged down in work, and the kids, and life, but he’s still the person I most want to phone when anything happens in life, and he’s still the person who makes me laugh the most.

Nothing like being with people you’ve known almost your entire life. Having a shared history is something you just can’t create with the new ones. No matter how much you like that, it just isn’t the same.

It's about thinking that being blond & slim & perfect will automatically bring you happiness, & then discovering that life is as full of as many disappointments as there were before.

Anyone can live in a house, but homes are created with patience, time and love.

That's how it is with relationships, it's a part of life, and all the great love songs and poems and films have been written by people who were standing where I was that morning as Simon shut the door. Doesn't make it any easier though.

And then there was him, the long and painful love of her life.

And suddenly I realize that although I've never thought about being in love with Nick before, all the right ingredients are there. I fancy him. I like him. He's my friend. He makes me laugh. I love being with him. And I start to feel all sort of warm and glowy, and screw the other stuff. Screw the stuff about him having no money, and living in a bedsit, and not being what I thought I wanted. I'm just going to go with this and see where it ends up. I mean, no one says I have to marry the guy, for God's sake.

Whether you are inspired or not, the only way to unlock your creativity, is to start writing.

My life is actually very boring. 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.

I want someone who will adore me so much that they cannot even walk past me without touching me in some way. I want someone who will worship me, even when.. I'm sitting around in fluffy slippers with no makeup on and hair scraped back. I'm sick and tired of being on my own. Most of the time I'm fine. Some of the time I even quite enjoy it. But at this precise moment in time I'm fed up with it. I've had enough..

I wish I could be hard and cynical. That I could take things slowly, not give too much of myself, because I'd be so frightened of getting hurt that there wouldn't be any other way. But no. every time I meet someone I dive in headfirst, showering them with love and attention, and hoping that this time they're going to be different.

It's all well and good saying you avoid pain by avoiding relationships, but what about the wonderful things you're avoiding as well? What about the joy and the intimacy and the trust that come with finding someone you love?

Sometimes in life, you have to make things happen. That you can change your life if you're willing to let go of the old and actively look for the new. That even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

I think relationships are very difficult. It's very easy to get swept away with excitement, glamour, and passion. I think the trick is to look for friendship rather than passion.

I'm not sure that insecurity is a good enough excuse for that sort of behavior. We're all insecure, and I really think he's old enough to have discovered the reasons behind his insecurity, and do something about them." ...Lucy

Fantasies are absolutely safe, as long as you never try to make them a reality.

Covers, so many covers, so many different, delectable pictures, and although, metaphorically speaking, it is the thing I hate most, when it comes to literature I always judge books by their covers. First the cover will catch my eye, then I read the back of the book, and then finally the first page.

Each of us may think we know exactly what we need to make us happy, what will be good for us, what will ensure we have our happy ending, but life rarely works out in the way we expect, and our happy ending may have all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, be shaped in all sorts of unexpected ways

You are the best person I've met in years, and if I'd met you in a year's time, or maybe even a few months, I know we could be happy together, but I can't give you what you need.

Jules says there are three things that make you a grown-up: an eight-piece set of matching dishes; gin, vodka and whiskey in the house; and making your bed every morning. I disagree with her. I think you're officially a grown-up when you've got another half. When you don't have to live in fear of other couples. When you don't have to feel you're not good enough.

I do what most women do. I meet someone and some of it's right, maybe he looks right, or has the right job, or the right background, and, instead of sitting back and waiting for him to reveal his other bits, I make them up. I decide how he thinks, how he's going to treat me, and, sure enough, every time I conclude that this time he's definitely my perfect man, and all of a sudden, well, not so suddenly perhaps, usually around six months after we've split up, I see that he wasn't the person I thought he was at all.

When I'm single, I'm this fabulous, independent, confident woman, and then I get involved with one disastrous man after another and I turn into this needy, insecure, fearful girl who becomes frightened of her own shadow.

Nothing in this world happens without a reason. That we are all exactly where we are supposed to be, and that the pieces of the puzzle have a tendency to come together when you least expect it.

... you don't have to wait for someone to treat you bad repeatedly. All it takes is once, and if they get away with it that once, if they know they can treat you like that, then it sets the pattern for the future.

When I was a student, I had a part time job as a barmaid at a dodgy pub in Kent.

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.

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.

My favorite part of speaking at events has never been the speaking, but the reading of my books.

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 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 had just got married when I started writing my fourth novel. I'd come back from honeymoon, moved into our first house - a gorgeous little carriage house in London - and made my office on the third floor, overlooking the treetops in North West London.

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.

I have a theory that you can tell what the head of a company is like by the people who work there. I knew a publishing house that was run on fear and paranoia, and I felt sorry for everyone who worked there. Needless to say, the person at the helm was not known for kindness, warmth, or grace.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

My teens and 20s were spent lying on sheets of tinfoil in the weak English sun, covered in baby oil. In Greece and France I would burn, then turn a dark brown.

I was twenty-seven when I came up with the idea for my first novel.

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 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.

Melanoma is not the most common of skin cancers, but it is the most dangerous if not found in the early stages.

We're trying to debunk the myth that Orlando is just a teen heartthrob, ... We see this as the perfect blend of two of the biggest talents in the industry right now.

We're trying to debunk the myth that Orlando is just a teen heartthrob,

We're teachers, professionals, and we're going to do our jobs regardless.

What I want in a good beach read is sunshine, drama, easy-reading and transportation to another world and other people's problems.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

The wonderful thing about being a writer is that everything that happens is grist to the mill.

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!

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.

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.

As a child, growing up in Hampstead, North London, I was shockingly fair-skinned. Holidays involved me spending the second and third day face-down on a bed, shrieking should anyone touch my blistered skin.

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.

For me, 'Bookends' marks the start of my foray into commercial fiction, away from what has always been thought of as more traditional chick lit - single girl in the city trips around in Manolos looking for Mr. Right.

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.

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.

I wanted to write stories I wanted to read, that I and my friends related to.

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 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 have only ever been to Antigua to hop over to other Caribbean islands. The airport had always seemed perfectly lovely, but I'm a quiet sort of holiday girl, and Antigua always seemed big.

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.

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.

In 'Straight Talking,' I had bared my soul, and the press attention had been overwhelming. There were times when I felt scared and vulnerable, regretting the articles I had written to publicize the book, regretting I had opened my life up for all to see.

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.

In my small, coastal New England town, an hour outside New York, I know many people who have dealt with cancer. I can reel off the names of at least 15 women I know, all in their 40s.