Louise brown

The importance and influence of books on me has been cumulative: the result of hearing and reading lots of stories about interesting people and places.

Don't write the book you think publishers want to commission. Plenty of other writers will be doing the same thing.

I thought it was something peculiar to me. I thought I was abnormal.

It took a brave editor in the U.S. to sign a contract for Dancing Girls, and without her belief in the book, I'm not sure it would ever have found its way into print.

I used to think about how I was conceived quite a lot when I was about 10 or 11, but I don't think about it at all now that so many other babies have been born in the same way.

Sometimes I like to play the soundtracks to famous musicals so we can all sing along. South Pacific is one of my favorites. Our neighbors must hate us.

I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.

The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I'm not confident there will be any takers.

When dad told me Mr Steptoe had passed away, I broke down.

I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.