Quotes from Fay Weldon

Men are irrelevant. Women are happy or unhappy, fulfilled or unfulfilled, and it has nothing to do with men.

What makes women happy? Nothing, for more than ten minutes at a time, so stop worrying.

You will find that women who are pregnant often don't want to be and women who aren't desperately envy those who are. Labour wards are always full of very punitive people.

There is probably an innate masochism in a lot of women that ends up disappointed if men don't ill-treat them.

My experience of men in cars has always been that if you don't want them to do something, they will. It is when they are behind a wheel that they most fear the control of women and children.

Only one thing registers on the subconscious mind: repetitive application - practice. What you practice is what you manifest.

Confidence is something one acquires. It can come early or late but it is impossible to write without it. Mine came late.

Be bold, but not too bold. Have courage, but not too much.

The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world.

Of course you have to believe in destiny; that everything is sheer chance is an intolerable notion.

by and large, nothing is as bad as you fear, or as good as you hope.

Food is the supremest of pleasures.

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realise you're not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.

Reliable office staff come in the shape of mature married women working from 9.30 to 3.30 (inside school hours) during which they will do more than the 9-5ers.