Jacqueline Jill Collins (October 4, 1937 – September 19, 2015) was an English romance novelist and actress. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1985 and spent most of her career there. She wrote 32 novels, all of which appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, and have sold more than 500 million copies. Her older sister is Joan Collins.
Her first book, The World Is Full of Married Men in 1968, became a best-seller. Forty years later, she admitted she was a “school dropout” and “juvenile delinquent” when she was 15. She “never pretended to be a literary writer.”
After the publication of her first novel, romantic novelist Barbara Cartland called the book “nasty, filthy and disgusting,” and accused Collins of “creating every pervert in Britain”. The book was banned in Australia and South Africa, but the scandal boosted sales in the United States and the UK.
Below we list some words of wisdom from Jackie Collins.
“The biggest critics of my books are the people who never read them.”
“I’m a storyteller, I’m not a literary writer, and I don’t want to be a literary writer. People say to me, “Oh, when are you going to write something different?” What? I don’t want to write anything different. I’m writing relationships between people, all different colors, all different sizes, all different sexual orientations, and that’s what I want to do.”
“If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!”
“If you wrote a page a day, at the end of the year you would have a book. Whether it’s any good or not is beside the point, but you would have a book, instead of just talking about it all the time.”
“I have this theory that people in Hollywood don’t read. They read ‘Vanity Fair’ and then consider themselves terribly well read. I think I can basically write about anybody without getting caught.”
“Men are cheaters. Women are not to be trusted. And most people are dumb.”
“I write about real people in disguise. If anything, my characters are toned down-the truth is much more bizarre.”
“If you want to achieve your dreams, you must follow them, and the best way to follow them is not to think about wanting to be very rich, but to think about doing something that you really want to do.”
“Love does not appear with any warning signs. You fall into it as if pushed from a high diving board. No time to think about what’s happening. It’s inevitable. An event you can’t control. A crazy, heart-stopping, roller-coaster ride that just has to take its course.”
“I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.”
“Ideas are all around me. If I wasn’t interested in them myself, I don’t think anyone else would be either.”
“I write synopses after the book is completed. I can’t write it beforehand, because I don’t know what the book’s about. I invent something for my publisher because he asks for one, but the final book ends up very differently.”
“Your whole life is ahead of you. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“Whatever you have a passion for, then you must do. If you want to write, write about something you know about.”
“My weakness is wearing too much leopard print.”
“I love London and Los Angeles equally. I was born and brought up London and then I went to Los Angeles as a teenager to stay with my sister Joan. So I feel I belong to both.”
“I wake up in the morning and I still have a passion for what I do, and I’ll be doing it when I’m 105, I’ll be scribbling away. If it was 100 years ago I’d be sitting by the campfire, saying, “Have I got a story to tell you.””
“I try not to bore my readers.”
“I don’t like being in one place too long. Five days just about does it for me because I have a very low threshold for boredom.”
“People are intrigued by fame, power and wealth and I think Hollywood is the only place where you get all three together.”
“The easier you make it look, the more difficult it is. Creating characters out of nothing, and making them interesting – and that’s another advice I would give to writers.”
“My books flow. People say they pick them up and they can’t put them down. It’s because when I’m writing them I pick my pen up and I cannot put my pen down.”
“If you want to have great sex, find a partner who really turns you on. Pills are merely props, and props can turn out to be a big drag.”
Copyright © 2026 Stephen Petullo, Scott Petullo
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