“It is the memory of past happiness that makes the present so intolerable.” — Fay Weldon Happiness Copy Share Image
by and large, nothing is as bad as you fear, or as good as you hope. — Fay Weldon Expectations Copy Share Image
People hear what they want and expect to hear, not what is said. — Fay Weldon Expectations Copy Share Image
No one could be more happy than a man who has never known affliction. — Fay Weldon Affliction Copy Share Image
“It became obvious that you had to be a feminist because it was such a ridiculous state of affairs.” — Fay Weldon Feminism Copy Share Image
The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside… — Fay Weldon Desire Copy Share Image
Novelists... fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence. — Fay Weldon Books Copy Share Image
One sort of believes in recycling. But one believes in it as a kind of palliative to the gods. — Fay Weldon Believe Copy Share Image
I didn't even know I was a feminist until I read it on the back of one of my own books. — Fay Weldon Book Copy Share Image
A 'weakness,' I now realize, is nothing but a strength not properly developed. — Fay Weldon Realizing Copy Share Image
So much for the fruits of love. Love? What's love? Sex, ah, that's another thing. Love has babies: sex has abortions. — Fay Weldon Abortion Copy Share Image
“Worry less about what other people think about you, and more about what you think about them.” — Fay Weldon Fear Copy Share Image
My experience of men in cars has always been that if you don't want them to do something, they will. It is… — Fay Weldon Behinds Copy Share Image
“The insistence that somehow women are an endangered species that needs to be protected at all costs seems to me to be… — Fay Weldon Endangered Copy Share Image
Nowadays most people wear black most of the time anyway: go to a literary party and one would imagine everyone there was… — Fay Weldon Black Copy Share Image
Writing is more than just the making of a series of comprehensible statements: it is the gathering in of connotations; the harvesting… — Fay Weldon Blackberries Copy Share Image
No one seemed able to look at themselves, coolly, from the outside. Their reality was all that could be seen in the… — Fay Weldon Able Copy Share Image
“This is my home now. I like it. Nothing happens here. I know what to expect from one day to the next.… — Fay Weldon Eating Copy Share Image
When today's young woman says she isn't a feminist what she means is she isn't a lesbian and she doesn't hate men,… — Fay Weldon Different Copy Share Image
No one should be allowed to give back the gift of life, unless they are very old and full of tears, when… — Fay Weldon Already gone Copy Share Image
It is easier for the reader to judge, by a thousand times, than for the writer to invent. The writer must summon… — Fay Weldon Book Copy Share Image
“Are you sure you wouldn't like some toast, Phyllis? Toast is one of the triumphs of our civilisation. It must be made… — Fay Weldon Food Copy Share Image
“I do use husbands a bit (in books). It's what writers of this kind do, actually. I am quite careful to try… — Fay Weldon Books Copy Share Image
“I am always concerned when people, finding out that I am a writer, apologise and say, “I’m not much of a reader… — Fay Weldon Book Copy Share Image
Yet this perhaps is what love does, or the memory of it; it sucks the life from the living, glorying body and… — Fay Weldon Afternoon Copy Share Image
“It seemed to me when I wrote The Life and Loves of a She-Devil that women were so much in the habit… — Fay Weldon Habits Copy Share Image
“Of course men can’t know you when you’re unclean,’ said Hilda. ‘It says so in the Bible. That’s why it’s called the… — Fay Weldon Adam Copy Share Image
“Pity me'--the unspoken words upon a nation's lips--'because I am indeed pitiable. I have been deprived of freedom--yes, of course, all that.… — Fay Weldon Deprived Copy Share Image
Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens. — Fay Weldon Happens Copy Share Image
Words are not simple things: they take unto themselves, as they have through time, power and meaning. — Fay Weldon Language Copy Share Image
I wonder if my shrink (sorry, psychiatrist) was a woman not a man I'd be in a better or worse state? — Fay Weldon Ifs Copy Share Image
What makes women happy? Nothing, for more than ten minutes at a time, so stop worrying. — Fay Weldon Happiness Copy Share Image
People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever. — Fay Weldon Break Copy Share Image
