Quotes from Julie Burchill

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

I just have a real problem with people who seek to portray fatness or thinness as moral concepts.

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.

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.

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.

Blakes Hotel in South Kensington was a particular favourite of mine during what I affectionately think of as my Restless Years.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.