Helen Fielding
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.Collection: Finance
Nobody wants to be racist and I think that most people aren't.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up, another falls to pieces.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 certainly think I'll end up writing about America in some form. I've taken plenty of notes. I like America very much.
Women today are bombarded with so many messages, like we should have Naomi Campbell's body and Madeleine Albright's career.
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.
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.
I've had a lot of books rejected in my time. My first novel, which didn't get published, was, with hindsight, crashingly dull.
My books have all generated controversy.
Comedy tends to come out of things which are quite painful and serious.
It's rather fun writing a female spy, because she has so much more kit. Bond never carried a hair dryer or a makeup bag. And he certainly didn't wear an uplift bra.
It is horrid to smirk.
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.
Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.Collection: Relationship
I like you very much. Just as you are.Collection: I Like You
It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth, or power but the pursuit of attainable goals.Collection: Goal
No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.Collection: Thinking About You
On social media people tend to show off, and post their most attractive picture, and moments that are most likely to give everyone else FOMO (Fear of Missing out). They rarely share the moments when they feel down, or when things have gone wrong and they need support.Collection: Media
When someone loves you it's like having a blanket all round your heart.Collection: Love You
Reminded of favorite poem by Wendy Cope which goes: At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle. The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle. And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle, And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful if you're single.Collection: Children
Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual lossCollection: Pride
One must not live one's life through men but must be complete on oneself as a woman of substance.Collection: Men
The corruption of the good by the belief in their own infallible goodnes is the most bloody dangerous pitfall in the human spectrum. Once you have conquered all your sins, pride is the one which will conquer you. A man starts off deciding he is a good man because he makes good decisions. Next thing, he's convinced that whatever decision he makes must be good because he's a good man. Most of the wars in the world are caused by people who think they have god on their side. Always stick with people who know they are flawed and ridiculous.Collection: War
It seems wrong and unfair that Christmas, with its stressful and unmanageable financial and emotional challenges, should first be forced upon one wholly against one's will, then rudely snatched away just when one is starting to get into it. Was really beginning to enjoy the feeling that normal service was suspended and it was OK to lie in bed as long as you want, put anything you fancy into your mouth, and drink alcohol whenever it should chance to pass your way, even in the mornings. Now suddenly we are all supposed to snap into self-discipline like lean teenage greyhounds.Collection: Morning
I hate Christmas. Everything is designed for families, romance, warmth, emotion and presents, and if you have no boyfriend, no money, your mother is going out with a missing Portuguese criminal and your friends don't want to be your friend anymore, it makes you want to emigrate to a vicious Muslim regime, where at least all the women are treated like social outcasts. Anyway, I don't care. I am going to quietly read a book all weekend and listen to classical music.Collection: Mother
One minute you're closer to someone than anyone in the whole world, next minute they need only to say the words 'time apart', 'serious talk' or 'maybe you...' and you're never going to see them again and will have to spend the next six months having imaginary conversations in which they beg to come back, and bursting into tears at the sight of their toothbrush.Collection: Sight
It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.Collection: Party
It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.Collection: Sometimes
Oh, God, I'm so lonely. An entire weekend streching ahead with no one to love or have fun with. Anyway, I don't care. I've got a lovely steamed ginger pudding from M&S to put in the microwave.Collection: Lonely
It's amazing how much time and money can be saved in the world of dating by close attention to detail. A white sock here, a pair of red braces there, a gray slip-on shoe, a swastika, are as often as not all one needs to tell you there's no point in writing down phone numbers and forking out for expensive lunches because it's never going to be a runner.Collection: Writing
9p.m. My flat. Feel very strange and empty. Is all very well thinking everything is going to be different when you come back but then it is all the same. Suppose I have to make it different. But what am I going to do with my life? I know. Will eat some cheese.Collection: Thinking
When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a passed over British Rail sandwich?Collection: Missing
Tom has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding: both being accustomed to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society.Collection: Parent
I am brave, though I am alone.Collection: Brave
Though with Bridget Jones's Baby: the Diaries, I'd like to make it clear that I did not ever get pregnant by two men.Collection: Baby
I made my excuses and left, thinking, really, after a certain age, people are just going to do what they're going to do and you're either going to accept them as they are or you're not.Collection: Thinking
I will not Drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week.Collection: Alcohol
When Bridget [Jones] does finally get pregnant, she 's bound to mess it up, but what I tried to show is the importance of love and kindness rather than perfection, and the importance of support from friends who help you to laugh at your mistakes and pick yourself up afterwards.Collection: Kindness
That's when the idea for Mad About the Boy arrived. It wasn't even a Bridget [Jones] story initially - then I realized I was writing in Bridget's voice and it grew from there into a Bridget novel.Collection: Writing
In terms of parenthood, I think the pressure has amped up massively too. Some parents are setting the bar ludicrously high in terms of doing things "right," and seeing children more as products to be perfected than simply children.Collection: Children
More than two years after Mad About the Boy was published, the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries ] movie started coming together. I felt better about the material, and found myself writing a letter from Bridget to her son: explaining the original story of how he came to be, from his own Mum.Collection: Baby
I got into my usual obsessive writing frenzy, using all the material I'd worked on for so long and crafting it into a little novel [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries].Collection: Baby
I think the pressure to be perfect generally in life has amped up massively in the last twenty years: especially for young people with the advent of social media.Collection: Thinking
Bridget Jones' Baby, at heart is about the gap between how you expect life to turn out and how it actually does.Collection: Baby
If the stories don't come from the inside out, then Bridget [Jones] is not being true to herself and it's very important to me that she stays that way.Collection: Important