Shirley Conran > Quotes

“I make no secret of the fact that I would rather lie on a sofa than sweep beneath it.”
― Shirley Conran

“Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.”
― Shirley Conran

“At eighteen I thought I knew everything, then at thirty, I realized that I knew nothing--and possibly never would, which depressed me until I noticed that no one else knew anything either.”
― Shirley Conran, Lace

“Which one of you bitches is my mother?”
― Shirley Conran, Lace

“Losing your innocence has very little to do with virginity, you know. Loss of innocence comes when you have to deal with the real world by yourself, when you learn that the first rule of life is kill or be killed. So different from one’s nursery stories.” She”
― Shirley Conran, Lace: A Novel

“You became an adult when you stopped caring what other people thought about you and started to care what you thought about them.”
― Shirley Conran, Lace: A Novel

“Loss of innocence comes when you have to deal with the real world by yourself, when you learn that the first rule of life is kill or be killed.”
― Shirley Conran, Lace: A Novel

“The difference between a career and a job,” Judy had once told her, “is that a job gets you nowhere. If you plan a career, then a job should be a step toward a definite goal—when you accept a job you should know exactly when you intend to leave it.”
― Shirley Conran, Lace: A Novel

“I wish we hadn’t picked up the idea that you were a failure if you didn’t have a man because then you would be without status and protection.”
― Shirley Conran, Lace: A Novel

“Loneliness from time to time was the price of freedom, and freedom wasn’t a stars and stripes, Boy Scout idea, it was doing what you damn well wanted to do—all the time.”
― Shirley Conran, Lace: A Novel

“Being pregnant was, well, inconceivable.”
― Shirley Conran, Lace

“That was the problem. Somehow you got this feeling that a dependent woman was feminine and an independent woman wasn’t feminine, that it was unfeminine to be responsible for yourself.”
― Shirley Conran, Lace: A Novel

“stand bustle or hustle, but she could only operate when things were”
― Shirley Conran, Lace