Quotes by Julie Burchill

“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.”

“A good part - and definitely the most fun part - of being a feminist is about frightening men.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 deaths perfect punctuation mark is a smile.”

“Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, Ill show you a little man.”

“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.”

“Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.”

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

“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.”

“Ill be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy”

“Scratch most feminists and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object, the difference is that is not all she longs to be”

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.

We sat there smiling at each other, shimmied to a standstill, thinking about all the boys that had wanted us that day, and how none of them had got us, not for a minute; how wed let them pay for drinks and candyfloss and then run away laughing, their cries of Slags! and Bitches ringing in our ears like respect rather than derision.

It was the flashing lights, and the noise of the machines, and the loud, loud music, all seeming to refract and contract around her, her eyes widening, her hair swooshing, her slow smile shining. She seemed an actual part of the place - all fun, all joy, all shimmery skittering energy.

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 deaths perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

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.

Theres 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 may be a cliche, but its 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.