Julie Burchill

• "I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time, such as kindness or cleverness.“
• "As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.“
• "As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.“
• "Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.“
• "My second husband believed I had such a fickle attitude to friendship that each Friday he would update the list of my 'Top Ten' friends in the manner of a Top Of The Pops chart countdown.“
• "What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?“
• "Shame, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.“
• "The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.“
• "What I find most upsetting about this new all-consuming beauty culture is that the obsession with good looks, and how you can supposedly attain them, is almost entirely female-driven.“
• "Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.“
• "I've always thought of beauty therapy, 'alternative' treatments and the like as the female equivalent of brothels - for essentially self-deceiving people who feel a bit hollow and have to pay to be touched.“
• "These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.“
• "These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.“
• "My dad didn't drive - the only dad I knew who didn't.“
• "When I moved out of London 13 years ago, I found a whole other reason not to drive. This was because my new husband Dan, unlike my dad, did drive, and this became a great source of fun and adventure.“
• "Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.“
• "Monarchists frequently declare that without the royal family, Britain would be 'nothing.' What a woeful lack of love for one's country such statements express.“
• "Fact is, famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on.“
• "The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps.“
• "The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion things to make life easier for men, in fact.“
• "My second husband believed I had such a fickle attitude to friendship that each Friday he would update the list of my 'Top Ten' friends in the manner of a Top Of The Pops chart countdown.“
• "I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?“
• "I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.“
• "Mind you, I've always been a very off-message type of fat broad one who gladly admits she reached the size she is now solely through lack of discipline and love of pleasure, and who rather despises people (except those with proven medical conditions) who pretend that it is generally otherwise.“
• "A good part - and definitely the most fun part - of being a feminist is about frightening men.“
• "From paying off friends' tax bills to rescuing stray dogs and stuffing &pound20 notes into the hands of homeless people, I can't get rid of my money fast enough.“
• "As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.“
• "We are used to female writers who use their private lives as unmitigated material being somewhat hormonal this somehow 'excuses' what might be seen as a highly unfeminine ability to turn their personal upsets into money.“
• "The money I pay for my cultural experiences came willingly from my own pocket - they were not the result of bread being removed from the mouths of the poor so that Miss Thing here could mince off to the circus smelling of roses.“
• "Being a monarchist - saying that one small group is born more worthy of respect than another - is just as warped and strange as being a racist.“
• "I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time, such as kindness or cleverness.“
• "No matter how old and glorious the models, sad indeed is the woman who sees fashion as a means of self-expression rather than an agent of social control.“
• "Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.“
• "It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England.“
• "As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.“
• "As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.“
• "The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.“
• "There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.“
• "It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.“
• "The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion things to make life easier for men, in fact.“
• "Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a little man.“
• "As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.“
• "Women, more often than not, do things which aren't remotely relaxing but are all about preening, which is just another sort of work.“
• "Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).“
• "Lots of women love to accuse men of being immature when the fellow in question displays a reluctance to 'commit.'“
• "I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time, such as kindness or cleverness.“
• "Can I just say here how much I hate the word 'pamper'? While pretending to celebrate and indulge women, it actually implies that their bodies are so revolting that even their 'me time' must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if potential suitors are to be prevented from running screaming in horror.“
• "There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.“
• "I don't really care what people tell children - when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won't hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.“
• "I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.“
• "When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?“
• "As a kid, I grew to define what I didn't want my life to be like by sitting behind moaning women on the bus, hearing them bang on about their aches and pains, both real and imagined.“
• "Most women are wise to the fact that lots of men love a cat-fight, and thus go out of their way not to give them one.“
• "'Stress' was the catch-all every pamper-pedlar I spoke to used to explain why healthy women feel the need to be regularly patted, petted and preened into a state of babyish beatification.“
• "Make no mistake, most women are well aware that they've never had it so good when they enter a spa or salon, it is purely a hair/nails thing, a prelude to an evening of guilt-free fun.“
• "These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.“
• "No one knows 'men' as such, any more than anyone knows 'women,' and if they do generalise they're probably trying to hide their own ignorance. You might know one 'man,' yes, or even lots of individual 'men'.“
• "It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.“
• "One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'“
• "I don't really care what people tell children - when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won't hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.“

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