Emma, your granddad’s on the line,” says Artemis, putting her hand over the receiver. “Something about the night bus and he’ll never trust you again?

We're playing Scrabble. It's a nightmare." "Scrabble?" He sounds surprised. "Scrabble's great." "Not when you're playing with a family of geniuses, it's not. They all put words like 'iridiums'. And I put 'pig'.

My real name is Madeleine Wickham, under which I write dramas with an edge of humour. As Sophie Kinsella its fast, all-out comedies, such as the Shopaholic series.

she doesn’t really have a sense of humor. I think she’d like to have one—it’s just that she doesn’t quite understand what jokes are for.

Relationships are a battle. They are a chess game. And what did I do? I just threw all my chess pieces down on the board at once, and said, "Here! Have them all!

sometimes you don't need a goal in life, you don't need to know the big picture. you just need to know what you're going to do next!

My daily Nespresso coffee, an unexpected shaft of sunlight through the window on a winter's day, my bargain Missoni sunglasses (70 percent off!)