I tend to take [ to Bridget Jones Diaries] something that nearly happened, or might have happened, and then exaggerate it to make it funny and to make it tie into the themes.

9p.m. My flat. Feel very strange and empty. Is all very well thinking everything is going to be different when you come back but then it is all the same. Suppose I have to make it different. But what am I going to do with my life? I know. Will eat some cheese.

Quite quickly I grew less deranged. I had begun the process of calming down, assimilating and compromising, which is necessary to live comfortably in the world as it is, and probably is why its imbalance never changes. But underneath, my idea of life was completely altered.

If we can't have comedy books written about aspects of womanhood without going into a panic attack about it, then we haven't got very far at being equal.

Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.

I was writing an earnest novel about cruises in the Caribbean and I just started writing 'Bridget Jones' to get some money, to finance this earnest work, and then I chucked it out.

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.