Bridget Jones's Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)

by Helen Fielding

negative thoughts 942 (approx. based on av. per minute), minutes spent counting negative thoughts 127 (approx.).

‘And because there’s more than one bloody way to live: one in four households are single, most of the royal family are single, the nation’s young men have been proved by surveys to be completely unmarriageable, and as a result there’s a whole generation of single girls like me with their own incomes and homes who have lots of fun and don’t need to wash anyone else’s socks. We’d be as happy as larks if people like you didn’t conspire to make us feel stupid just because you’re jealous.’ ”

“Shall we open it?” I said. “OK.” I handed it to her, she gave it back to me, giggling. I gave it back to her. I love girls.

Wise people will say Daniel should like me just as I am, but 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. I am going to cancel and spend the evening eating doughnuts in a cardigan with egg on it.

(necessity of open mouth during mascara application great unexplained mystery of nature).

The unanimous initial verdict was, “Bastard fuckwittage.”

I suddenly realize everything has shifted and now I am looking after my parents instead of them looking after me, which seems unnatural and wrong. Surely I am not that old?

Sharon maintains men—present company (i.e. Tom) excepted, obviously—are so catastrophically unevolved that soon they will just be kept by women as pets for sex, therefore presumably these will not count as shared households as the men will be kept outside in kennels.

I hate Perpetua when she gets like this. Stupid old fartarse bag.

There’s nothing worse than people telling you you look tired. They might as well have done with it and say you look like five kinds of shit.

“Oh, but Mum, I have to work with Daniel, I—” “Darling—wrong way round. He has to work with you. Give him hell, baby.”

negative thoughts: approx. 445 per hour, positive thoughts 0.

“I’m thinking Hugh Grant.

(full of beer and baked potatoes),

Love Jude. Girls are so much nicer than men (apart from Tom—but homosexual).

BBC Pride and Prejudice.

Then we had a long discussion about the comparative merits of Mr. Darcy and Mark Darcy, both agreeing that Mr. Darcy was more attractive because he was ruder but that being imaginary was a disadvantage that could not be overlooked.

that is too fucking funny

“Colin Firth

Evening climaxed with Tom cheering himself up letting off rockets from the roof terrace into the garden of the people below who Tom says are homophobic.

He laughed and then said, “Well, don’t do anything too complicated. Remember everyone’s coming to see you, not to eat parfaits in sugar cages.”

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably hemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems.

He was sweating, dirty, his hair was unkempt, his shirt unbuttoned. Ding-dong!