Rachel Johnson Quotes
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I went freelance in 1996 and my children are now teenagers and it seemed right.
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I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity.
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English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness.
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I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
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Of course I'm naughty. I've always had to compete for attention, you see.
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I want 'The Lady' magazine to be restored to its traditional place in the pantheon of weekly magazines.
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Being blonde means people decide on sight that you are much prettier and nicer than you really are, just as Americans automatically add 10 points to someone's IQ when they hear an English accent. Fact.
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Of one thing there is no doubt: if Paris makes demands of the heart, then Munich makes demands of the stomach.
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If you tell the truth you get into trouble, and that's why politicians are extremely dull.
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Don't worry about never having time to write. Just write what you can in the time you do have and give yourself a big clap on the back, followed by a double latte and a blueberry muffin.
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Our parents provided us with the essentials, then got on with their own lives. Which makes me realise that my parents were brilliant, not for what they did, but more for what they didn't do.
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It's often discouraging sitting working at home, wondering whether to put the heating on, answering the doorbell to the gas board, feeling it's all utterly pointless.
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I don't mind being called snobbish, a pain and a social climber, but being called unkind really hurts.
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Being boring is just wrong, isn't it? You wouldn't have got anywhere being boring.
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When I'm called unkind... that really cuts to the quick. You can say anything else that you like about me.
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If there's anything worse than being 16, it's having parents visibly reliving their own teenage years in your anguished presence.
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There was a time when no difficult subjects were ever aired in the 'Lady', and sadly, life isn't like that.
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Without my Johnson trademark mop of yellow hair, I think I would be nothing.
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It's very hard to self-motivate without someone standing over you snarling, ready to hurl the chalk at your head at the slightest slackening.
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I'm worried about looking like a bad person when, in fact, I try to be a good person. I don't like the public image that I've been dressed with and it worries me.
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People always say there's no such thing as bad publicity, and you always think they're right, because it seems self-evident: nobody's going to buy a magazine that nobody ever talks about, so people should want to buy a magazine that everybody's talking about.
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I think everyone can recognize the one-upmanship and the competition that go on wherever you are, especially among groups where the women don't have to hold down office jobs and instead get in a total snit about who won the longest carrot contest or took first prize for summer chutney in the August fete.
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I talk to bankers, distributors, marketing people. I used to sit at home in my tracksuit bottoms, and the real excitement of my day would be going out to get a copy of 'Private Eye' and a latte.
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'The Lady' is a piddling little magazine that no one cares about or buys.