Sophie Hannah

Only Agatha Christie can write like Agatha Christie.

— Sophie Hannah

“Why treat the people closest to you like strangers?”

— Sophie Hannah

When a writer tries to copy another writer, it's doomed to fail.

— Sophie Hannah

“Everything's something you can't do until you have to do it.”

— Sophie Hannah

“If you ask for a memory and they tell you a story, they're lying”

— Sophie Hannah

Crime fiction is a way of satisfying that nosy need to know.

— Sophie Hannah

I'm not cut out to lug babies around!

— Sophie Hannah

“What you cannot imagine, you cannot fear.”

— Sophie Hannah

We manufacture anger to give ourselves the illusion of power when we feel weak and helpless.

— Sophie Hannah

I've got lots of favourite authors, but I would say Nicci French because I look more forward to reading her next new…

— Sophie Hannah

My father, whose hobby was collecting secondhand cricket books, came back from a book fair one day with a copy of 'The…

— Sophie Hannah

A lot of women feel like they should be enjoying motherhood, they should be fulfilled and shouldn't be thinking, 'I wish I…

— Sophie Hannah

Agatha Christie's writing is incredibly skillful because her books are incredibly intellectually puzzling and challenging.

— Sophie Hannah

“Are men like babies? Is trying to distract them a better tactic than asking them to behave reasonably?”

— Sophie Hannah

Poirot is a classic character from fiction, not a MacBook Air; he would not benefit from updates.

— Sophie Hannah

In a crime novel, if you are going to have a big revelation in chapter 30, you have to plant the information…

— Sophie Hannah

Nobody has ever written as many enjoyable, fun-to-read crime novels as Agatha Christie. It's all about the storytelling and the pleasure of…

— Sophie Hannah

“Perhaps he too is pretending to be someone he isn't. Perhaps we all are: everyone in here - the people to my…

— Sophie Hannah

For me, a big part of writing psychological thrillers is choosing crimes committed for motives which would only apply to a particular…

— Sophie Hannah

Cambridge is heaven, I am convinced it is the nicest place in the world to live. As you walk round, most people…

— Sophie Hannah

“No ramifications whatsoever. You’re not going to ramificate; you don’t know what it means. You don’t know which of the words I…

— Sophie Hannah

I am a fellow commoner at Lucy Cavendish College. My husband used to be a lecturer at Leeds University, and we lived…

— Sophie Hannah

Weak people always attack strong people - it's safer. It's weak people who are dangerous, who lash out uncontrollably and hurt you…

— Sophie Hannah

I always notice the dysfunctional dynamic of human relationships because most places where you encounter it, people are trying to pretend it…

— Sophie Hannah

“What they'd got was a fat, balding academic who bandied about the phrase "family annihilation", especially when there were cameras pointed at…

— Sophie Hannah

“I’m not convinced that stories from real life have beginnings and ends, as a matter of fact. Approach them from any vantage…

— Sophie Hannah

With me, even if my life depended on it, I wouldn't be able to cry. Not with somebody there. Because even if…

— Sophie Hannah

“Sometimes the person everyone is afraid of alarming or offending has a slightly less fixed idea about what sort of person they…

— Sophie Hannah

“When an author took the time and trouble to choose exactly the right words and arrange them in the right order, there…

— Sophie Hannah

Some writers, I'm told, look for their characters' surnames in telephone directories. I don't - it seems too obvious. Or too deliberate:…

— Sophie Hannah

“Too much self-esteem, thought Simon: the real curse of our age.”

— Sophie Hannah

I love the house we're in, but at the same time, I'm hooked on the romance of house-hunting.

— Sophie Hannah

There are very few well-adjusted people in my books. But I do think that's normal. Because everyone does have their issues and…

— Sophie Hannah

If we knew more about psychology, we would be better equipped to deal with other people's psychological damage which they might project…

— Sophie Hannah

“Wall of lies?’ Proust muttered. ‘Is that the one that borders the orchard of obsession that contains the tree of lunacy?”

— Sophie Hannah

Reading is the only area of my life in which I prefer to be non-autonomous.

— Sophie Hannah

“She was irritated, briefly, by the thought that she might be becoming more mature. Why should she become a better person when…

— Sophie Hannah

No one has been buried at Mill Road Cemetery in Cambridge, England, for many years, and so the place has a shady,…

— Sophie Hannah

“Oh, God. I can’t do this. I only slightly want to have a baby. I think. I actually don’t know at all.”

— Sophie Hannah

But we'll stumble on, she and I, into our messy future. And we'll have each other.

— Sophie Hannah