Hadley Freeman > Quotes

“Make up is generally there to make you look better, not make you look like you're wearing make up.”
― Hadley Freeman

“Logos are the bleating of the insecure, desperate for acceptance by the chronically shallow. ”
― Hadley Freeman

“Wow, you really... like my drawings." he eventually replied. When Tim Burton pretty much tells you that you're an obsessive nerd, you know you've crossed a line.”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“you’d better be something, and something really special, to justify all you’ve been given, and that can feel terrifying.”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“Sometimes you need to pretend to be someone else for a bit in order to accept yourself.”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“I clung to rules like rungs on a ladder: they were reassuring, grounding, and they told me what I was supposed to do and, most important, if I was doing it well.”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“Extreme self-control and self-denial are how so many girls express anxiety, and anorexia is an extension of that all-too-common female tendency.”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“I only managed to last a week on a dating website. You see, because of 'The Princess Bride' I have high standards when it comes to love and I just didn't believe that any beautiful farm boys would be on match.com. How would he have wifi up in his mountainous hovel?”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“I was a darling / I was a demon / I was a lamb”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“Life has changed a lot in the past 30 years: men don't tend to sport Michael Douglas-style bouffant hair, more's the pity.”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Just the thought of Michael Douglas dirty dancing is faintly traumatizing.”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Refusing to go on a second date with someone because they failed to recognise a completely random Ghostbusters quote over dinner? Well, why waste time with losers? (It really is astounding I was single until the age of 35.)”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Both Pope John Paul II and Bill Clinton told how much they loved the movie, proving that 'The Princess Bride' appeals to saints and sinners alike.”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Every country wants to have heroic narratives of the war, and what this all shows is how vulnerable historical truth is.”
― Hadley Freeman, House of Glass: The story and secrets of a twentieth-century Jewish family

“But when an anorexic says 'I don't want to be fat. I want to be thin.' They are saying 'I want to be other than I am. And what I am is unhappy. I want to be someone else.”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“When most people think of masculinity in eighties movies, they probably think of that strange genre that sprouted and bulged up in that decade like Popeye's biceps after eating spinach, consisting of men who look like "condoms stuffed with walnuts," speaking their lines in confused accents and emphasising random syllables, strongly suggesting they'd learned the words phonetically: Schwarzenegger, Lundgren, Stallone (technically, if not obviously, a native English speaker).”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Life, unfortunately, is not like an ‘80s movie, in which a character has an epiphany, a triumphal rock track plays on the soundtrack, and everyone smiles at one another: roll end credits. If my teenage years were a movie, they were more like an extremely depressing and directionless European art house film that goes on for ten hours with no logical character motivation.”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“One of the jokes in 'Back to the Future' is how people in the 1950s don't get 1980s fashion. People in the 1950s were right.”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Pretty Woman has suggested that it is possible to lift oneself out of one's class (even if one has to become a prostitute and -even worse- spend a week with Richard Gere to do so).”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“I didn’t die, but I didn’t recover for a long time. I was in a gray fog that no one could explain to me, and so I didn’t understand it.”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“Fans say they prefer the 'realism' of Nolan's films compared to Burton's. (..) If these films were realistic, they would consist of crowds of people pointing at Batman and saying 'It's one of those Fathers4Justice morons! What a DICK.' Also, take it from a reformed fashion writer: no man can wear a full-length cape in the real world without sparking serious mockery. Who comes looking for realism when they watch a movie about some dude who flies through the air dressed as a freaking bat?”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Daddy's Girl' (from 'Three Men and a Baby'): This song is about the love a daughter feels for her father. Sweet, right? Wrong! Here's the chorus: 'Little baby wanna hold you tight / She don't ever wanna say good night / She's a lover, she wanna be Daddy's Girl.' I love the movie but someone needs to call CPS, stat.”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Even beyond princesses, the popular image of an anorexic today has hardly changed since medieval times: she is upper-middle class, white and privately educated. This is why anorexia tends to get much more coverage in the media than, say, schizophrenia, as the former is easier to illustrate with photos of thin, pretty girls. The downside is that it is more likely to be dismissed as a silly rich girl's problem, like tennis elbow or Daddy issues.”
― Hadley Freeman, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia

“Take My Breath Away (from Top Gun): This song is so good it makes having sex with Tom Cruise seem almost sexy.”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies

“Top Gun isn't just about falling in line with the military. Hell no! It's about rebelling against it, too! Because that's what real men are like, you see. A real man isn't a pencil pusher - he's the lone wolf, the renegade, the MAVERICK. Real men ride their motorcycles against a sunset into the danger zone. Women have sex with the mavericks, but men ARE the mavericks. High five low five! Yeah! And just in case that isn't entirely clear in the script, Tom Cruise's character's name is, of course, Maverick (real men also don't bother with fey subtlety).”
― Hadley Freeman, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies