"I wanted to write a novel about the sandwich generation: parents falling to pieces at one end of your life and children being quite demanding at the other. You, the woman, are probably working full-time, but society, which is really very old-fashioned, still expects women to do all the caring."

Joanna Trollope Literature See all quotes by Joanna Trollope →

React to this quote

More by Joanna Trollope

“For all that somebody gets dumped every nanosecond in the world, you don’t want to be lumped in with everybody else – you want it to be expressed as poignantly and vividly as you feel it yourself…A cliche is only a cliche if it’s happening in someone else’s life.”

“What I’m trying to do in all these novels is mirror a contemporary preoccupation. I’m not providing any solutions. I’m simply saying: ‘Can we please get the conversation going?’”

“A combination of a desire to communicate, and a passionate belief in the power of story to build up relationships, to shape us. People-watching. But also being aware of situations that are currently preoccupying people. Codes of conduct change, but what the human heart wants really doesn’t.”

Resonant Thoughts

"…For a long time, it debilitated me a lot. Nothing that I wrote was good enough. I’d start writing then be like, “Nope. This is sh–.” And that was a really negative experience to have with my writing,…"

— Rupi Kaur

Literature1992

#writing

"I think there's a lot of people out there who say we must not have horror in any form, we must not say scary things to children because it will make them evil and disturbed... That offends me deeply, …"

— Joss Whedon

Literature1964

#family

"You know from the repeated declarations in the Law that the principal purpose of the whole Law was the removal and utter destruction of idolatry, and all that is connected therewith, even its name, an…"

— Maimonides

Religion1135–1204

#family

"I found the king extremely attractive, naturally endowed as he was with all the intellectual qualities a woman could wish for in the man close to her heart. His gentle, serious look, which could still…"

— Farah Pahlavi

Literature1938

#love