Explore Quotes by Jojo Moyes

My go-to winter recipe is beef and butternut squash stew, cooked in the slow oven all day.

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.

Don't set pen to paper until you know your main characters inside out. Create files detailing their appearances, likes, dislikes, and personal background. You may not use all the information, but it is a crucial step in planning your story.

For every book that I write... I develop a history for each person and make sure they are well rounded and flawed. You have to know everything about them from their shoe size, to where they went to school, to what their first pet was, to what they like to eat, to what they want out of life.

Unless you sell millions, I think it's very hard as a writer not to feel anxious about what you put out. I always feel I could do better.

If the characters are compelling, readers will follow anywhere.

A stylish person, for me, is one who draws your eye without necessarily being showy; they wear clothes that are beautifully cut, flatter the wearer, and show that they are not impervious to fashion, but not a slave to it either.

I think there is an awful lot of technology for technology's sake. I have yet to be convinced by my husband that persuading our mobiles to talk to our computers is going to be quicker and more straightforward than scribbling a note in our kitchen diary.

I have always written. I was one of those kids who would always fill exercise books with girls and telepathic ponies.

I write in all sorts of places; it's a legacy of my time as a journalist, where I could turn out copy in a hotel corridor. But I have a little office that I rent in my local town, and that's my ideal place.

Marriage is a decades-long experiment, conducted mostly in private; a test of will in the face of unexpected obstacles.

I find my best writing time is actually 6 A.M., before the detritus of the day - the fish fingers and the school uniform and dogs and bills - have had a chance to clog up my brain. I can usually get 500 words done before 7 A.M. But it is difficult, and the Internet, and social networking, are terrible timesucks.

Try to write at least 500 words a day. You may ditch 499 of them tomorrow, but you will still be moving forward.

Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of parent for child, for family, for country.

I chose to believe that God, a benign God, would understand our sufferings and forgive us our trespasses.

When you put someone down all the time, eventually they stop listening to the sensible stuff.

Nobody fights you like your own sister; nobody else knows the most vulnerable parts of you and will aim for them without mercy.

Believe me, you have to have a certain confidence in your powers of descretion to let a dentist loose with a drill in your mouth less than an hour after you've...um...entertained his wife.

If I don't cry while writing a key emotional scene, my gut feeling is it's failed.

You know, you spend your whole life feeling like you don't quite fit in anywhere. And then you walk into a room one day, whether it's at university or an office or some kind of club, and you just go, 'Ah. There they are.' And suddenly you feel at home.

There is a hunger in you. A fearlessness. You just buried it, like most people do.