Lisa Jewell Quotes

Basically, when I hear the words 'family drama,' I run in the opposite direction.

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running.

As a dramatist, you're looking for points of friction.

But while mum and dad were incredibly caring, it was also a very chaotic household where everyone fought about everything. So I know what it's like to internalize all that chaos.

I guess in America we're so sold on this ideal of the perfect, well-adjusted family that is able to confront any conflict and, with true love and understanding, work things through. I'm sure they do exist, but I never knew any of them.

My parents' marriage was very rocky. They were always arguing. When they split up when I was in my 20s, my brother and I were both delighted because we knew they weren't good for each other.

I don't believe in happy families.

The idea that the family is this locus of support but can also hold you back and keep you down makes for good drama.

I used to tell my mum to leave my dad when I was, like, nine. I loved my father, don't get me wrong. I really loved him, but he wasn't a good dad, and he wasn't a good husband.

We figured the audience would want good stories, great art, wonderful characters, people you could fall in love with that we would immediately put through hell.

Who hasn't had an argument with their mother-in-law?

Yes, a family is interesting. You can get a lot of drama in the conflicts there. It's like the sea. It seems calm, but inside there is conflict.

it seemed to me that I had never met another person on earth as discouraging to my happiness as my father. and it appeared that I had the same effect upon him.

Sibling relationships are complicated. All family relationships are. Look at Hamlet.

I like people to be surprised by the turn of events. I don't want things just to be pat and formulaic. If there's some sort of internal combustion in the character or a desire to change the way things are going, that makes for conflict, which is the essence of drama.

If you are going through something with one of your parents, you know that there is this feeling inside you constantly that something is wrong. Even if you want to pretend that it doesn't matter to you or you don't care, the truth of the matter is that you do, because they are your parents and you love them.

My mother and father didn't love each other, so they were always fighting.

I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine.

You have to go to the ultimate situation in drama.

There's actually 14 in our family, but we disowned the others.

Many great stories are father issues, mother issues or death.

I had a very angry father and was disconnected from my family.

A lot of my YA novels are about family problems.

My father had kicked me out of his house at the height of an argument over an opinion difference. He had become so enraged. He told me never to come back, and that was all the severance it took.

My kids have never seen me scream at anybody. They've never seen an argument. There's never been even a cold silence. And those are things that I grew up with because my parents did end up divorcing.