Joanna Trollope Novelist Quotations

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.

You can't be too old to be a writer, but you can definitely be too young!

Two things: a lifelong fascination dating from reading fairy stories as a child with stepmothers, why are they always supposed to be "wicked"?

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

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.

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.

It's not so much hearth as family life which is where we all, I'm sure, learn (or fail to learn!) all our life skills for the future.