Author Quotes

Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Forgotten is forgiven.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature .

She was scrubbing furiously at a line of grease spots which led from the stove towards the door to the dining-room. That was where Henry had held the platter tilted as he carried the steak in yesterday. And yet if she had warned him once about that, she had a thousand times!

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself.

A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnessary.

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.

Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell.

When you've heard one bagpipe tune, you've heard them both.

I went up a straight crooked lane and, I said 'No thanks, yes if yer please.

Women today are bombarded with so many messages, like we should have Naomi Campbell's body and Madeleine Albright's career.

There are so many images pushed at women and so many ideas of what you're supposed to be. I think there's too much of this superwoman, this woman with a bottom like two billiard balls. There's no real celebration of just being a person.

The whole point of diaries is that other people find them and read what you've put. I did once take to writing my inner thoughts on the computer at the end of other things I was writing and ended up faxing four pages of hideous stuff to my accountant so I don't do that now.

Nobody wants to be racist and I think that most people aren't.

My books have all generated controversy.

It is horrid to smirk.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up, another falls to pieces.

If we can't have comedy books written about aspects of womanhood without going into a panic attack about it, then we haven't got very far at being equal.

I've had a lot of books rejected in my time. My first novel, which didn't get published, was, with hindsight, crashingly dull.

I was writing an earnest novel about cruises in the Caribbean and I just started writing 'Bridget Jones' to get some money, to finance this earnest work, and then I chucked it out.

I think that when you're writing fiction what you're doing is reflecting life as you see it, and putting down how you think and how other people think, and the sort of confusions that you don't normally like to admit to.

I like L.A. It's like a mini break. For a writer, it's hilarious. Like the food. Where I come from, we eat chip sandwiches: white bread, butter, tomato catsup and big fat french fries. It's delicious. Here, you order a creme caramel and the waiter says, 'You know, that contains dairy.'

I come from Yorkshire in England where we like to eat chip sandwiches - white bread, butter, tomato ketchup and big fat french fries cooked in beef dripping.

I certainly think I'll end up writing about America in some form. I've taken plenty of notes. I like America very much.

I always market research my books before I hand them in by showing them to five or six close friends who I trust to be honest with me, so they are very heavily re-written already.

Dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.

Comedy tends to come out of things which are quite painful and serious.