Julie Burchill (born 3 July 1959) is an English writer, who started as writer for the New Musical Express at the age of 17. She has written for newspapers such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian, and has declared herself "militant feminist"

Quotes

  • The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact.
    • Julie Burchill, British feminist and abortion advocate, in Damaged Gods, 1986.
  • Prostitution is the supreme triumph of capitalism.... Worst of all, prostitution reinforces all the old dumb clichés about women's sexuality; that they are not built to enjoy sex and are little more than walking masturbation aids, things to be DONE TO, things so sensually null and void that they have to be paid to indulge in fornication, that women can be had, bought, as often as not sold from one man to another. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women, for the moral tarring and feathering they give indigenous women who have had the bad luck to live in what they make their humping ground.
  • A good part — and definitely the most fun part — of being a feminist is about frightening men. American and Australian feminists have always known this, and absorbed it cheerfully into their act; one thinks of Shere Hite julienning men on phone- in shows, or Dale Spender telling us that a good feminist is rude to a man at least three times a day on principle. Of course, there's a lot more to feminism... but scaring the shit out of scumbags is an amusing and necessary part because, sadly, a good many men still respect nothing but strength,
    • Burchill (1990) The Sunday Times; as cited in: Christopher W. Tindale (1999) Acts of arguing: a rhetorical model of argument. p. 58
  • Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.
    • Burchill (1992) in The Spectator. 16 January 1992; cited in: Ned Sherrin (2008) Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. p. 170
  • Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.
    • Attributed to Burchill in: Mark Water (2000) The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations. p. 111
  • We may be saddled with Bush and Blair, but you've got Prince Charles (a big friend of the Islamic world, probably because of its large number of feudal kingdoms and hardline attitude to uppity women), the Catholic church (taking a brief break from buggering babies to condemn any western attack as "morally unacceptable") and posturing pansies such as Sean Penn, Sheryl Crow and Damon Albarn.
  • Cherie Blair can call herself a feminist all she likes, but any feminist worth her salt would have made a point of having a termination - on the NHS, naturally - when she got knocked up the last time. . . Famous women would rather admit to having been sexually abused as children than to having had a termination. . . Myself, I'd as soon weep over my taken tonsils or my absent appendix as snivel over those [five] abortions. I had a choice, and I chose life - mine.
    • Julie Burchill (2005), British feminist and abortion advocate, from "Abortion: still a dirty word" in The Guardian (May 25, 2005).
  • A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be with and the most pleasurable to have and to hold.
    • Attributed to Julie Burchill in: Austin Imoru (2008) The Woman and Her Sexuality. p. 109

Sex & sensibility (1992)

Julie Burchill (1992) Sex & sensibility.

  • Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.
    • p. 20
  • It has been said (by Shelley Winters) that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not - it's a visa, and it runs out fast.
    • p. 55
This article is issued from Wikiquote. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.