Julie Burchill Quotes
Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.
It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast.
What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?
Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.
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.
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.
The latest twist on the pampering concept is spa parties, where a group of friends take over an entire spa.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.
A wedding is a funeral which masquerades as a feast. And the greater the pageantry, the deeper the savagery.
A good part - and definitely the most fun part - of being a feminist is about frightening men.
Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth... suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
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.
Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.
Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.
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.
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.
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).
Now the whole dizzying and delirious range of sexual possibilities has been boiled down to that one big, boring, bulimic word. RELATIONSHIP.
Having 'best friends' is - at least for me - as outdated and small-minded a concept as the idea of 'Sunday best clothes.'
Lots of women love to accuse men of being immature when the fellow in question displays a reluctance to "commit"...
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 just have a real problem with people who seek to portray fatness or thinness as moral concepts.
What men don't want, in fact what anyone who's any sort of thrill-seeking, intelligent adult doesn't want, is some crushing bore describing their emotions in real time every waking hour.
Blakes Hotel in South Kensington was a particular favourite of mine during what I affectionately think of as my Restless Years.
When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?
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.
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.
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.
'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.
Women, more often than not, do things which aren't remotely relaxing but are all about preening, which is just another sort of work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Being a child is horrible. It is slightly better than being a tree or a piece of heavy machinery but not half as good as being a domestic cat.
Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.
The allegedly 'classy' magazines often seem to be in an endless, undeclared competition to see who can climb furthest up the fundament of Gwyneth Paltrow or Jennifer Lopez.
But just think what a boring, bread-and-milk world this would be without the boastful.
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.
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.