..we were always taught, instead of waiting to be swept off our feet, to 'expect little, forgive much'.
Helen FieldingOn 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.
Helen FieldingOne 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.
Helen FieldingIt 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.
Helen FieldingOne must not live one's life through men but must be complete on oneself as a woman of substance.
Helen FieldingDieting 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.
Helen FieldingIn terms of myself, my next big plan is to loose 7llb (as I've been planning to do since I was seventeen) Also to go to the gym three times a week, not merely to buy a sandwich. And also de-clutter the garage.
Helen FieldingIt'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.
Helen FieldingI looked at him nonplussed. I realized that I have spent so many years being on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been completely wiped out of my consciousness. Have reached point where believe nutritional idea is to eat nothing at all, and that the only reason people eat is because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and ruining their diets.
Helen FieldingSingletons should not have to explain themselves all the time but should have an accepted status โ like geisha girls do
Helen FieldingI realize it has become too easy to find a diet to fit in with whatever you happen to feel like eating and that diets are not there to be picked and mixed but picked and stuck to, which is exactly what I shall begin to do once I've eaten this chocolate croissant.
Helen FieldingI 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.
Helen FieldingAs Bridget writes to her son, in Bridget Jones' Baby - "if you just keep calm and keep your spirits up, things have a habit of turning out all right, just as they did for me."
Helen FieldingThere 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.
Helen FieldingWhen 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.
Helen FieldingI 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.
Helen Fielding9p.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.
Helen FieldingExes should never, never go out with or marry other people but should remain celibate to the end of their days in order to provide you with a mental fallback position.
Helen FieldingWith most of the events in the books [ Bridget Jones Diaries ] I draw a little bit from my own life and some from what I see happening around me.
Helen FieldingEventually, I manage to cheer Mum up by allowing her to go through my wardrobe and criticize all my clothes.
Helen FieldingWith so many dark things to worry about in the world right now, I hope people will just go with the fun and enjoy [ Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries].
Helen FieldingIt'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.
Helen FieldingTom 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.
Helen FieldingOf course the chronology of the books is a bit back- to - front, and books usually come out before movies. But happily, these [Bridget Jones's] are fictional comedy diaries - not a history of the Battle of Waterloo.
Helen FieldingBridget Jones' Baby, at heart is about the gap between how you expect life to turn out and how it actually does.
Helen FieldingI 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.
Helen FieldingIn 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.
Helen FieldingThough with Bridget Jones's Baby: the Diaries, I'd like to make it clear that I did not ever get pregnant by two men.
Helen FieldingIt is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth, or power but the pursuit of attainable goals.
Helen FieldingI 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.
Helen FieldingFor me, writing Bridget's [Jones] stories is an instinctive, organic thing, which tends to happen more by accident than design.
Helen FieldingI 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].
Helen FieldingIf 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.
Helen FieldingMore 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.
Helen FieldingReminded 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.
Helen FieldingI am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, have been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own devices. I can't take the pressure.
Helen FieldingI had my daughter by C-section, so knew when and where she was going to be born. I got freakishly organized and prepared a group e-mail birth announcement. Unfortunately, I accidentally pressed Send All. I then had to send another e-mail saying, "I'm really sorry but I haven't actually had the baby yet." Then, when I actually did have the baby, I felt too embarrassed to send another e-mail saying, "I've definitely had the baby now."
Helen FieldingQuite quickly I grew less deranged. I had begun the process of calming down, assimilating and compromising, which is necessary to live comfortably in the world as it is, and probably is why its imbalance never changes. But underneath, my idea of life was completely altered.
Helen FieldingOh, 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.
Helen FieldingBridget [Jones] was always, at heart, about the gap between how you feel you're expected to be and how you actually are and that gap has only widened. Young people now are entering an uncharted sea, where there's huge pressure to judge yourself on how many Likes or Followers you get on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, rather than the on important things like being kind, honest, resilient, funny and a good friend.
Helen Fielding