There are so many images pushed at women and so many ideas of what you're supposed to be. I think there's too much of this superwoman, this woman with a bottom like two billiard balls. There's no real celebration of just being a person.

Comedy tends to come out of things which are quite painful and serious.

I looked at him nonplussed. I realized that I have spent so many years being on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been completely wiped out of my consciousness. Have reached point where believe nutritional idea is to eat nothing at all, and that the only reason people eat is because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and ruining their diets.

It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.

I always market research my books before I hand them in by showing them to five or six close friends who I trust to be honest with me, so they are very heavily re-written already.

..we were always taught, instead of waiting to be swept off our feet, to 'expect little, forgive much'.

If the stories don't come from the inside out, then Bridget [Jones] is not being true to herself and it's very important to me that she stays that way.