As Bridget writes to her son, in Bridget Jones' Baby - "if you just keep calm and keep your spirits up, things have a habit of turning out all right, just as they did for me."

I will not get upset over men, but instead be poised and cool ice-queen.

Don't say 'what,' say 'pardon,' darling, and do as your mother tells you.

I hate Christmas. Everything is designed for families, romance, warmth, emotion and presents, and if you have no boyfriend, no money, your mother is going out with a missing Portuguese criminal and your friends don't want to be your friend anymore, it makes you want to emigrate to a vicious Muslim regime, where at least all the women are treated like social outcasts. Anyway, I don't care. I am going to quietly read a book all weekend and listen to classical music.

I think that when you're writing fiction what you're doing is reflecting life as you see it, and putting down how you think and how other people think, and the sort of confusions that you don't normally like to admit to.

I'd always hoped to write the story as a novel, but there was a long period when the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries] movie was stalled and in confusion. I felt frustrated creatively, and just couldn't work on the Baby material till the movie was sorted out.

I'd been working on the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries material] for years, first, in the Independent newspaper columns and then in the various versions of the movie scripts.