Helen Fielding quotes:

Dieting 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.

I come from Yorkshire in England where we like to eat chip sandwiches - white bread, butter, tomato ketchup and big fat french fries cooked in beef dripping.

It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.

I like L.A. It's like a mini break. For a writer, it's hilarious. Like the food. Where I come from, we eat chip sandwiches: white bread, butter, tomato catsup and big fat french fries. It's delicious. Here, you order a creme caramel and the waiter says, 'You know, that contains dairy.'

I was writing an earnest novel about cruises in the Caribbean and I just started writing 'Bridget Jones' to get some money, to finance this earnest work, and then I chucked it out.

I like you very much. Just as you are." Mark Darcy, Bridget Jones

If 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.

As women glide from their twenties to thirties, Shazzer argues, the balance of power subtly shifts. Even the most outrageous minxes lose their nerve, wrestling with the first twinges of existential angst: fears of dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian.

Tom 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.

It'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.

Women today are bombarded with so many messages, like we should have Naomi Campbell's body and Madeleine Albright's career.

I 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.

Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss

Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.

I 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.

One 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.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up, another falls to pieces.

The whole point of diaries is that other people find them and read what you've put. I did once take to writing my inner thoughts on the computer at the end of other things I was writing and ended up faxing four pages of hideous stuff to my accountant so I don't do that now.

I will not sulk about having no boyfriend, but develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as woman of substance, complete without boyfriend, as best way to obtain boyfriend.

I 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.

Actually last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little angora crop top told me he was gay a sex addict a narcotic addict a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo."

Is the whole world doomed to emotional trauma?

Bet I will become known as brilliant cook and hostess

Am going to cook shepherd's pie for them all - British home cooking.

When someone loves you it's like having a blanket all round your heart...

Quite 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.

I certainly think I'll end up writing about America in some form. I've taken plenty of notes. I like America very much.

I 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.

the nation's young men havebeen proved by surveys to be completely unmarriageable, and as a result there's a wholegeneration of single girls like me with their own incomes and homes who have lots of fun anddon't need to wash anyone else's socks.

No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.

Eventually, I manage to cheer Mum up by allowing her to go through my wardrobe and criticize all my clothes...

It is horrid to smirk.

Reminded 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.

I've had a lot of books rejected in my time. My first novel, which didn't get published, was, with hindsight, crashingly dull.

There 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.

Comedy tends to come out of things which are quite painful and serious.

..we were always taught, instead of waiting to be swept off our feet, to 'expect little, forgive much'.

9p.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.

As 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."

Bridget [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.

Bridget Jones' Baby, at heart is about the gap between how you expect life to turn out and how it actually does.

But if you are single the last thing you want is your best friend forming a functional relationship with somebody else.

Don't say 'what,' say 'pardon,' darling, and do as your mother tells you.

Exes 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.

For me, writing Bridget's [Jones] stories is an instinctive, organic thing, which tends to happen more by accident than design.

I am brave, though I am alone.

I 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].

I 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."

I 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.

I like L.A. It's like a mini break. For a writer, it's hilarious. Like the food. Where I come from, we eat chip sandwiches: white bread, butter, tomato catsup and big fat french fries. It's delicious. Here, you order a creme caramel and the waiter says, 'You know, that contains dairy.

I 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.

I 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.

I tend to take [ to Bridget Jones Diaries] something that nearly happened, or might have happened, and then exaggerate it to make it funny and to make it tie into the themes.

I think the pressure to be perfect generally in life has amped up massively in the last twenty years: especially for young people with the advent of social media.

I will not Drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week.

I'd always hoped to write the story as a novel, but there was a long period when the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries] movie was stalled and in confusion. I felt frustrated creatively, and just couldn't work on the Baby material till the movie was sorted out.

I'd been working on the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries material] for years, first, in the Independent newspaper columns and then in the various versions of the movie scripts.

If the stories don't come from the inside out, then Bridget [Jones] is not being true to herself and it's very important to me that she stays that way.

If you ask where a relationship is going too often the question has a habit of turning into where the relationship went. Unfortunately, however, God has given women an inbuilt irresistible urge to insist on knowing where their relationships are going, and to force their partners to discuss the matter at length whenever they are late for something.

I'm no good at anything. Not men. Not social skills. Not work. Nothing.

In terms of Bridget [Jones] I honestly don't know. One thing I can say for sure is that all of these stories have been an honest, instinctive expression of something I felt or observed at the time. I would never cynically think "Oh that would sell well next."

In 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.

In 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.

In the end there is nothing more unattractive to men than radical feminism.

It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth, or power but the pursuit of attainable goals.

It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.

It 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.

It'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.

More 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.

My books have all generated controversy.

Nobody wants to be racist and I think that most people aren't.

Of 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.

Oh God, what's wrong with me? Why does nothing ever work out?

Oh God. valentine's Day tomorrow. Why? Why? Why is (the) entire world geared to make people not involved in romance feel stupid when everyone knows romance does not work anyway. Look at (the) royal family. Look at Mum and Dad.

Oh, 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.

On 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.

One must not live one's life through men but must be complete on oneself as a woman of substance.

That's when the idea for Mad About the Boy arrived. It wasn't even a Bridget [Jones] story initially - then I realized I was writing in Bridget's voice and it grew from there into a Bridget novel.

The corruption of the good by the belief in their own infallible goodnes is the most bloody dangerous pitfall in the human spectrum. Once you have conquered all your sins, pride is the one which will conquer you. A man starts off deciding he is a good man because he makes good decisions. Next thing, he's convinced that whatever decision he makes must be good because he's a good man. Most of the wars in the world are caused by people who think they have god on their side. Always stick with people who know they are flawed and ridiculous.

Though with Bridget Jones's Baby: the Diaries, I'd like to make it clear that I did not ever get pregnant by two men.

Valentine's Day purely commercial, cynical enterprise, anyway. Matter of supreme indifference to me.

When 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.

When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a passed over British Rail sandwich?

With 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.

With 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].

You see, things being good has nothing to do with how you feel outside, it is all to do with how you are inside.

You'll never get a boyfriend if you look like you wandered out of Auschwitz.

I will not get upset over men, but instead be poised and cool ice-queen.