Jilly Cooper Quotes & Sayings

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

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. — Jilly Cooper

For sheer sexiness, a man must be beautiful. Funny. yes. Clever, no. — Jilly Cooper

If you look across the valley, you can see exactly what I mean: about four beautiful houses, and you think something is happening in each of them. It's like a mural. — Jilly Cooper

I love the long grass coming up to meet the willows. — Jilly Cooper

I think it bespeaks a generous nature, a man who can cook. — Jilly Cooper

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

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

My own parents loved each other very much. — Jilly Cooper

The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things. — Jilly Cooper

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

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

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. — Jilly Cooper

Leo, sadly, has Parkinson's, but he used to cook all sorts of dazzling things. — Jilly Cooper

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. — Jilly Cooper

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

You've 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 they'll be there tomorrow, do you? — Jilly Cooper

I live at home and, if I want to start work at 11 o'clock, I can. — Jilly Cooper

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. — Jilly Cooper

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. — Jilly Cooper

It must be a terrible pressure to have to go to the office. — Jilly Cooper

I've got a book coming out soon so I just must get some weight off. — Jilly Cooper

I'm basically a very happy person and I don't have to be anybody else. — Jilly Cooper

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. — Jilly Cooper

Hurting other people is not excusable because you've been hurt yourself. — Jilly Cooper

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

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

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. — Jilly Cooper

But I always seem to finish a book and then think, oh God, I've got to pay a tax bill, so I'd better write a novel, so I tend not to stop and learn word processing. — Jilly Cooper

I'm bored stiff by ballet. i can't bear those muscular white legs like unbaked plaited loaves, and I get quite hysterical every time one of the women sticks out her leg at right angles, and the man suddenly grabs it and walks round in a circle as though he were opening a tin. — Jilly Cooper

And I would really like to be a grandmother, but only when Felix or Emily meet the right person and are ready. — Jilly Cooper

The bank told us we ought to sell this house to pay off our overdraft. Riders saved the day. I was so pleased when it got to number one, I went all around the fields crying and crying. — Jilly Cooper

I'd never have written the big books in London. — Jilly Cooper

People who can write a book usually do. — Jilly Cooper

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 ... — Jilly Cooper

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

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

But really I'm not terribly interested in what I eat. — Jilly Cooper

I would really like to spend more time with the family. Every time I go abroad I miss them all dreadfully. — Jilly Cooper

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

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

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. — Jilly Cooper

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

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