Quotes from Helen Fielding

When he's hot, he's hot; when he's not, he's not. But at least there is always food

Work — once merely an annoying nuisance — has become an agonizing torture.

It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.

She's a jellyfisher: You have a conversation with her that seems all nice and friendly, then you suddenly feel like you've been stung and you don't know where it came from.

Alcohol units: 5. Drowning sorrows. Cigarettes: 23. Fumigating sorrows. Calories: 3,856. Smothering sorrows in fat duvet.

Jude: Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer? Not with slightly bigger breasts or slightly smaller nose? Bridget: No. Shazzer: Well, fuck me. Tom: This is someone you hate right? Bridget: Yes, yes, I hate him.

Girls are so much nicer than men (apart from Tom-but homosexual).

The whole bloody world's got a commitment problem. It's the three-minute culture. It's a global attention-span deficit. It's typical of men to annex a global trend and turn it into a male device to reject women to make themselves feel clever and us feel stupid. It's nothing but fuckwittage.

I am brave, though I am alone.

barometer of success in later life is not that they always win, but how they deal with failure. An ability to pick themselves up when they fall, retaining their optimism and sense of self, is a far greater predictor of future success than class position in Year 3.

As Oscar Wilde says, thirty-five is the perfect age for a woman, so much so that many women have decided to adopt it for the rest of their lives.

The plans to lose weight and change personality kept me aloft for two days, only to collapse around my ears. I realize it was only a complicated form of denial.

THEY ARE CHILDREN!' Mr Wallaker roared. 'They are not corporate products! What they need to acquire is not a constant massaging of the ego, but confidence, fun, affection, love, a sense of self-worth. They need to understand, now, that there will always – always – be someone greater and lesser than themselves, and that their self-worth lies in their contentment with who they are, what they are doing and their increasing competence in doing it.

Decided to have a cappuccino and chocolate croissants on way to work to cheer self up. Do not care about figure. Is no point as no one loves or cares about me.

I began to think I quite liked her really. It's always so nice to meet someone more badly behaved than oneself.

I mean, I haven't rushed to the answerphone once to see if anyone's aware of my existence in the world!

Bridget Jones, wanton sex goddess, with a very bad man between her thighs... Mum... Hi.

I keep telling you, nobody wants legs like a stick insect. They want a bottom they can park in a bike in and balance a pint of beer on.

Funny how at twenty-five you worry about not being taken seriously and take being a sex object for granted. Later you take being taken seriously for granted, and worry about not being a sex object.

It's no good. 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.

All got really plastered after that. Was completely fantastic evening. As Tom said, if Miss Havisham had had some jolly flatmates to take the piss out of her she would never have stayed so long in her wedding dress.

he picked me up in his arms, as if I was as light as a feather, which I am not, unless it was a very heavy feather, maybe from a giant prehistoric dinosaur-type bird...

On the night bus, I felt as though parts of other people were going into parts of me I didn't even know existed. I felt like I was being more intimate with members of the night-bus community than I'd ever been with anyone in my whole life.

Bet I will become known as brilliant cook and hostess