Literary Birthday – 17 August – Jessie Burton

Happy Birthday, Jessie Burton, born on 17 August 1982.

Jessie Burton Quotes

1. Writing is a leap of faith. But how wonderful that the person you’re putting faith in is yourself.
2. There’s a romance about writing that just won’t go away. We have to drink fresh coffee in our turrets, we have to write at dusk to the sound of a trilling blackbird, in a kimono. I wrote The Miniaturist at any hour of the day, in offices, on the train, in theatre dressing rooms. I wrote The Muse looking like someone had just dragged me backwards through a bush, and I mainly ate crisps. If you wait for a room of your own, you’re going to be waiting a long time. Some people need silence, some people need noise. I just needed the words on the page.
3. Every woman is the architect of her own fortune.
4. Like most artists, everything I produced was connected to who I was – and so I suffered according to how my work was received. The idea that anyone might be able to detach their personal value from their public output was revolutionary.
5. Do not write for the market and do not underestimate the power of personal passion.
6. Here’s the paradox: you will not be able to truly write your book unless you have written your book. GET. IT. OUT. YOUR. HEAD. Everything will probably change later – that’s fine. At this stage, accept deep imperfection.
7. The brain, when you read silently, often corrects things for you. It’s only when you hear the rhythm of your sentences aloud, does your choice of words fall, or clear the hurdle.
8. A lifetime isn’t enough to know how a person will behave.
9. For me, writing my first novel was an act of hope. I wanted something in my life to change. I wanted to write, and I wanted to be published. I wanted to see if I could make it work. But now I know that it was the act of writing, not being published, that saved me.
10. Growing older does not seem to make you more certain. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt.

Jessie Burton is an English author and actress. Her work explores female identity, societal pressures, secrets, autonomy, and motherhood. She has published four novels, The Miniaturist, The Muse, The Confession, and The House of Fortune, and three books for children, The Restless Girls, Medusa, and Hidden Treasure. The Miniaturist was the UK’s Christmas no.1, National Book Awards Book of the Year, and Waterstones Book of the Year 2014. In 2017 it was adapted as a BBC One miniseries. Collectively her novels have been published in almost 40 languages. As of 2026, two adaptations of her work are in development: a screen version of The Confession, and a musical of The Restless Girls. Follow her on Instagram.

Source for image: Benjamin Turner Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JessieBurton_by_BenTurner-8_preview.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: The Complete Author Birthday Calendar