Julie Burchill Quotations

Here in Barcelona, it's the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are the objects of admiration - not a bunch of half-witted monarchs.

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.

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.

It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast.

When I started at the 'Guardian,' though, I couldn't think of anything we saw eye to eye on, except feminism, and even this would soon be arguable as 'Guardian' writers queued up to drool over Eminem.

Lots of women love to accuse men of being immature when the fellow in question displays a reluctance to 'commit.'

It is also interesting to note that the original supermodels are now making a comeback after being dismissed in the Nineties as being 'greedy' by a gaggle of male designers who lived like Sun Kings.

Grooming oneself with all the crazed compulsion of an under-exercised lab rat in order to hook a rich man and obtain a lush lifestyle makes a certain (albeit seedy) sense.

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.

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.

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.

What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?

I know that Brighton is famously a mixture of the seedy and the elegant, but in the summer of 2001 seediness swamped elegance hands down.

Women, more often than not, do things which aren't remotely relaxing but are all about preening, which is just another sort of work.

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.

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.

Sadly, a lot of what passes for feminism these days is just moaning about men, congratulating ourselves on nothing in particular, and mocking them for being big kids while doing everything we can to keep them that way.

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.

When I moved to Brighton from London in 1995, I was struck by what I thought of as its townliness. A town, it seemed to me, was that perfect place to live, neither city nor country, both of which like to think they are light years apart but actually have a great deal in common.

Being a monarchist, and fawning over those 'above' you, you must naturally despise those 'below' or on the same socioeconomic level as yourself, because that is how hierarchy worship works.

I wouldn't know how to fool a man any more. My deceiving days seem so long ago.

Gluttony and idleness are two of life's great joys, but they are not honourable.

A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be and the most pleasurable to have and to hold.

When a man wants to relax, he will slob out and really relax. Or he will pursue a hobby - anything from building models to watching sport.

There are exciting, intelligent, fat people - and exciting, intelligent, thin people.

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.

Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a little man.

She may have done, but I don't recall.

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.

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'.

My dad didn't drive - the only dad I knew who didn't.

One of the few ways in which I feel I've actually matured is that as I've grown older I do find the concept of 'men' mystifying, whereas when I was a feisty young thing I was forever saying 'The most fun part of being a feminist is frightening men!'

People often yearn back to more innocent times, but more and more, as I get older, I find myself hankering after more jaded days.

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.

What Mrs. Thatcher did for women was to demonstrate that if a woman had enough desire she could do what she wanted, do anything a man could do. . . . Mrs. Thatcher did not have one traditional feminine cell in her body.

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.

As I have got older, I have found myself making friends with the ease and swiftness that other people pick up fuzzballs on their jumpers. And I believe it is probably my lack of longing for 'The One' that makes me so popular.

The secret is not to care what anyone thinks of you.

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.

Oh come on, John, ... I don't think that was demeaning, I thought she was a sweet girl. I got friends who behave like that. Haven't you?

As a militant troublemaker, I once wrote that it was the duty of every woman worthy of the description to upset men at least three times a day, on principle.

A therapist might suggest my generosity is a way of buying affection. But buying people's love has never been an issue for me. Generally speaking, I don't want their love.

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.

Because I was an only, I had more things, and I remember early on the kick I got from giving stuff away. Despite all the myths about only children not being able to share, actually I've never knowingly met a stingy one.

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.

I am not one of those fat birds who feels miserable because models are thin. Frankly, I feel more insulted by the idea that unless I see other fat birds in fashion magazines, I will be reduced to a sniveling wreck of a human being.

The 'g' is silent - the only thing about her that is.

Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.

It seems that one moment I was this little kid only caring about animals and flowers and stuff, and then the next minute I was this raging stew of hormones. I don't know if you've ever been a raging stew of anything, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it.

The pictures from the first professional photo session that the young David Beckham submitted himself to are extraordinary. He has a barely suppressed smile, as though he and the cameraman are complicit in the understanding that this is not yet David Beckham we see and that there is an element of deceit in selling the photographs as such

Some say that Cusk has no sense of humour, but expecting giggles from this writer would be akin to expecting sonnets from Benny Hill.

Rachel Cusk's books are like pop-up volumes for grown-ups, the prose springing out of the page to bop you neatly between the eyes with its insights.

Prostitution reinforces all the old dumb clichés about women's sexuality; that they are not built to enjoy sex and are little more than walking masturbation aids, things to be DONE TO, things so sensually null and void that they have to be paid to indulge in fornication, that women can be had, bought, as often as not sold from one man to another. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women.

Hooliganism incarnate, a walking, talking, screaming, squawking metaphor for What's Wrong With Young People Today.

I feel I'm trying to get this really crap car going, and it just keeps stalling on me. And then other times I feel like my life's a train thundering toward me, and I'm in a car stuck on the crossroads and can't get out. Isn't it great being young!

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.

I almost choke on my popcorn when I hear film stars, who walk on red carpets as much as the rest of us do on zebra crossings, criticising youngsters who crave fame.

I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. I'm a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist.

I didn't cry when I left free-booting, smash-and-grab papers that would have appeared to be far more natural homes for me and, at the risk of being vulgar, paid far better for my services.

In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist - as opposed to the U.K., where the Queen is probably the best-known animal, vegetable and/or mineral going when it comes to overseas visitors.

'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.

Nicole Kidman in particular seems to bring out the butt-kisser in the sassiest of hackettes, as they ceaselessly strive to portray her as some sort of cross between Mother Teresa and Marilyn Monroe.

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.

Knowing that the 'Sex and the City' chicks now rack up almost two centuries between them, why do some of us fuss and hiss about a bit of retouching on their forthcoming film poster?

It must be said that Brighton, unlike London, makes driving seem very appealing. Instead of glowering faces and angry horns on all sides, we have the coast road in front of us and the Sussex Downs just 10 minutes behind us.

In my third husband I had discovered a blissfully laid-back type who thought it nothing less than hilarious when I misread the map on the way to Wales, so it took us an extra three hours, or when I was sick in a plastic carrier bag during much of the drive back from Devon - a bag that turned out to have a hole in it.

Graham Greene famously said that all writers need a chip of ice in their heart; Cusk can come across as the most beautiful ice palace of stalactites and stalagmites, and some people find her company, albeit by proxy, about as inviting as a long weekend in a walk-in frigidaire.

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.

I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?

It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.

It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England.

People - and I include myself - get fat because they choose pleasure over self-denial.

When actresses jump on the anti-Iraq bandwagon, they often combine down-home momism with an ignorance of Islamist intent which is truly awesome.

When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?

It shouldn't come as any surprise that those who choose acting as a profession are phonies who live in a fantasy world. What is surprising is how many of them are blissfully unaware of it.

And call me a pig, but isn't it brilliantly refreshing how early the Dutch eat dinner? When they're still laying out the cutlery in achingly hip Barcelona, they're hanging the Closed sign on the restaurant doors of old Amsterdam.

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.

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.

Contrasting British servicemen and women with the appeasers, it is hard not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here?

Transsexualism is, basically, just another, more drastic twist on the male menopause

When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women.

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.

I don't have a spiritual bone in my body; but what I am, is religious.

A cynic should never marry an idealist. For the cynic, marriage represents the welcome end of romantic life, with all its agony and ecstasy. But for the idealist, it is only the beginning.

I won't be going to any New Year's Eve parties because I think they're naff. No one over the age of 15 should bother going to parties.

Only those who haven't got the wit to speak for themselves would ever want their clothes to do it for them.

One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and doing a show.

When I started at the Guardian, though, I couldnt think of anything we saw eye to eye on, except feminism, and even this would soon be arguable as Guardian writers queued up to drool over Eminem.

May I just single out for salutations, on the 'anti-war' side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam.

Sex, on the whole, was meant to be short, nasty and brutish. If what you want is cuddling, you should buy a puppy.

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.

I have always voted Labour and I always will. I have got to have one stupid, bovine part of me and that's the part that votes Labour.

Presley sounded like Jayne Mansfield looked - blowsy and loud and low.

Feminism seeks to turn the biggest, bloodiest carnivore in the world - passion - into a right-on cud-chewing vegan. It can never work. Sex was never meant to be that way. Sex, on the whole, was meant to be short, nasty and brutish. If what you want is cuddling, you should buy a puppy.

Punk was over in two years. That was the only damn good thing about it.

Prostitution is the supreme triumph of capitalism. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women, for the moral tarring and feathering they give indigenous women who have had the bad luck to live in what they make their humping ground.

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.

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.

To believe that one, or even three, mates can supply all the things one needs from one's friends is as stupid as believing married couples must do everything together.