Jacqueline Wilson

Jacqueline Wilson (born 17 December 1945) is an English children’s author.

Jacqueline Wilson, 2009

Quotes

• It is strange…that sometimes people assume the worst of children if they come from poor families. I remember being astonished when I took my daughter to a party given by her schoolfriend’s parents. They lived in a lovely, big house very near the block of council flats where I grew up. The mother was very friendly to me, and said how pleased she was that our daughters were friends because obviously she could have nothing to do with ‘those dreadful scary rough children from the council flats’. I didn’t want to embarrass her by saying that I had once been one of those very children.
  • On what she loves the most about the music business in "Jacqueline Wilson interview: "People say my books are all sex and drugs, but I can't remember any'", The Guardian (6 February 2015)

• I can't think of a book where there's a woman born into a working-class background, who in her 70s is living a very comfortable, upper-middle-class sort of life; a woman who married at 19, had a baby at 21, was a policeman's wife for years, but whose marriage broke up in late middle age and who became very well known for a time. She then met a woman and became very happy with her. There isn't one!
  • On how her life experience is more surreal than fiction in "Jacqueline Wilson: 'I've never really been in any kind of closet'", The Guardian (4 April 2020)

• I don't think that girls would ever have wanted a grey-haired, wrinkly writer as a role model if they were wanting to feel good about maybe being gay…I'm sure they could find much more glamorous examples.
  • On why she never wrote a children’s or young adult book addressing gayness in "Jacqueline Wilson: 'I've never really been in any kind of closet'", The Guardian (4 April 2020)

• I’ve tried hard…I don't know … my experience of my own dad and my own ex-husband possibly has some effect. I will remedy this. It is very unfair. I have tried harder, but I just can't quite get there yet.
  • On why the lack of positive father figures in her novels in "Jacqueline Wilson: 'I've never really been in any kind of closet'", The Guardian (4 April 2020)

• My mum would have loved Shirley Temple as a daughter – full of confidence, tap-dancing all over the place in flouncy clothes, and showing off. [She had] A girl sitting there reading a book, looking gormless.
• [Her mother stopped her daughter from wearing any jewelry. Wilson refers to a large rose quartz ring on her finger] I mean, isn't it pathetic when, even in your 70s, you wear things that a psychiatrist would point out is rebelling against your mother?
• [Referring to Trish, her civil partner] I asked her about earlier girlfriends and she said she'd never had a year-after-year relationship, and I thought: "Right, I'm going to be that." And I have been, so far.
• [After reaching no. 7 in the best-seller lists] But a certain JK Rowling came along and you're never going to beat that. And there's always been one or two others much better than me. [Better or bigger?] Bigger! [laughs] Occasionally better.
  • "'I wanted to be No 1. But a certain JK Rowling came along': Jacqueline Wilson on rivalry, censorship – and love", The Guardian (7 August 2023)