Jilly Cooper Quotes

I wrote my earliest piece for The Sunday Times about being a young wife.

Youve simply got to go on and on with your family and friends and tell them how much you love them because you never know whether theyll be there tomorrow, do you?

Although it is the biggest time-waster in office life, you must never underrate the importance of the memo. You will be judged by the volume of your paper work.

I think we ought to have a kindness year, or a kindness century.

Bachelors begin at thirty-six. Up till this age they are regarded as single men.

Always be nice to everyone in the firm on the way up. You never know who you may meet on the way down.

Go to lots of interviews, at least one a month even when you don't need a job, to keep in training for when you do.

Leo, sadly, has Parkinsons, but he used to cook all sorts of dazzling things.

If you feel compelled to give a New Year's Eve party, don't invite people to arrive too early or they'll go off the boil before midnight.

Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake all afternoon.

The memo's chief function ... is as a track-coverer, so that you can turn on someone six months later and snarl: 'Well, you should have known about it, I sent you a memo.

I was so flattered that someone wanted me to write a book, I said I would. It was published in 1969.

People always assume that bachelors are single by choice and spinsters because nobody asked them. It never enters their heads that poor bachelors might have worn the knees of their trousers out proposing to girls who rejected them or that a girl might deliberately stay unmarried.

The letter of application ... should be a masterpiece of fiction, papering over all the cracks. Get it properly typed on decent writing paper. Never let it run over the page, people get bored with reading.

I have a theory that the secret of marital happiness is simple: drink in different pubs to your other half.

The male - I have found - is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.

it's a good idea to wait a few months before joining anything when you arrive at a village. A bookseller friend who retired to nearby Oxfordshire, and was worried he might be bored, got himself on to every village committee in the first six months, and spent the next ten years extricating himself.

I can assure you that the class system is alive and well and living in people's minds in England.

in a village you can't sack or fight with someone, as you'll find yourself stuck beside them in the hairdresser's next morning.

Meetings ... are rather like cocktail parties. You don't want to go, but you're cross not to be asked.

At home I have big vats of cabbage soup that I make to slim down.

Without doubt, keep a diary. From the day you're born, keep a diary, because we all forget things so quickly.

hurting other people is not excusable because you've been hurt yourself.

A lot of meetings are held to arrange when to have meetings. ... Meetings today are usually called conferences to make them sound more significant.

I love the long grass coming up to meet the willows.

The aristocrat, when he wants to, has very good manners. The Scottish upper classes, in particular, have that shell-shocked look that probably comes from banging their heads on low beams leaping to their feet whenever a woman comes into the room. Aristocrats are also deeply male chauvinist, and ... on the whole they tend to be reactionary.

I'm not wild about holidays. They always seem a ludicrously expensive way of proving there's no place like home.

There is something infinitely dingy about the word workshop. Pray that England doesn't become a nation of workshopkeepers.

People who can write a book usually do.

The only thing a whirlwind courtship does is blow dust in everyone's eyes.