Julie Burchill

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

— Julie Burchill

We may be saddled with Bush and Blair, but you've got Prince Charles (a big friend of the Islamic world, probably because of its large number of feudal kingdoms and hardline attitude to uppity women), the Catholic church (taking a brief break from buggering babies to condemn any western attack as "morally unacceptable") and posturing pansies such as Sean Penn, Sheryl Crow and Damon Albarn.

— Julie Burchill

Cherie Blair can call herself a feminist all she likes, but any feminist worth her salt would have made a point of having a termination - on the NHS, naturally - when she got knocked up the last time. . . Famous women would rather admit to having been sexually abused as children than to having had a termination. . . Myself, I'd as soon weep over my taken tonsils or my absent appendix as snivel over those [five] abortions. I had a choice, and I chose life - mine.

— Julie Burchill

The only kind of socialist to be is a Stalinist, and the only kind of woman to be is a Bitch.

— Julie Burchill

A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be with and the most pleasurable to have and to hold.

— Julie Burchill

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.

— Julie Burchill

It has been said (by Shelley Winters) that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not - it's a visa, and it runs out fast.

— Julie Burchill

I've always thought of beauty therapy, 'alternative' treatments and the like as the female equivalent of brothels - for essentially self-deceiving people who feel a bit hollow and have to pay to be touched.

— Julie Burchill

Shame, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.

— Julie Burchill

Fact is, famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on.

— Julie Burchill

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.

— Julie Burchill

It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.

— Julie Burchill

One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'

— Julie Burchill

My second husband believed I had such a fickle attitude to friendship that each Friday he would update the list of my 'Top Ten' friends in the manner of a Top Of The Pops chart countdown.

— Julie Burchill

My second husband believed I had such a fickle attitude to friendship that each Friday he would update the list of my 'Top Ten' friends in the manner of a Top Of The Pops chart countdown.

— Julie Burchill

I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.

— Julie Burchill

The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact.

— Julie Burchill

Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.

— Julie Burchill