Joanna Trollope Quotes

I am not a fan of the cupcake image. This idea that you can distract a girl with something frivolous like a cake or shoes or handbags, and she won't be a threat to men.

- Joanna Trollope

I'm actually rather orderly, although the way that I write is not.

- Joanna Trollope

Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

- Joanna Trollope

My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are of equal importance.

- Joanna Trollope

I'm no lyrical stylist; you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as intellectual.

- Joanna Trollope

I don't always set stories in villages, more often in towns. But always in smallish communities because the characters' actions are more visible there, and the dramatic tension is heightened.

- Joanna Trollope

I don't need to marry again. I've been married twice, and I love it when it works, but these days we live until we're 80 and marriages are jolly long.

- Joanna Trollope

I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.

- Joanna Trollope

You can't love a library of e-books. You can't furnish a room with e-books.

- Joanna Trollope

I've experienced huge kindness here, a great welcome and some very generous reviews without the snide social edge I often suffer from at home. I'm not patronized here either, which I much appreciate!

- Joanna Trollope

All TV can do is capture the spirit of a book because the medium is so utterly different. But I'm very grateful for the readers that Masterpiece Theatre has undoubtedly brought me.

- Joanna Trollope

You can change yourself and you can change the situation but you absolutely cannot change other people. Only they can do that.

- Joanna Trollope

You can't help parts of yourself leaking into other characters.

- Joanna Trollope

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

- Joanna Trollope

I'm a third done into a new book but sorry - I have a superstition about talking about it!

- Joanna Trollope

I'm an enormous fan of people who have had a lot of faith in themselves, and been on a tremendous journey.

- Joanna Trollope

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

- Joanna Trollope

I am often criticised for being rather accessible.

- Joanna Trollope