Candace Bushnell Quotations

Some people are settling down, some people are settling and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies.

The key to life is your attitude. Whether you're single or married or have kids or don't have kids, it's how you look at your life, what you make of it. It's about making the best of your life wherever you are in life.

I've always been fascinated by young women who come to New York. The characters in 'Lipstick Jungle' were once young women who came to New York and we see their early experiences through flashbacks.

If I'm with a man, is that going to prevent me from achieving my goal? What sacrifices will I have to make in terms of being myself, if I'm with a man? Something that young women find out really quickly is that when you start dating, all of a sudden you're supposed to have a role. You're not allowed to just be yourself.

My parents had a great marriage. Interestingly, it made it harder for me in relationships because I knew what a good relationship looked like.

I'm the kind of person who would have liked to have lived at the Plaza. I love crystal chandeliers and gold leaf, velvets and mirrors, Oriental rugs and marble.

You don't have to do everything by the time you're 30. Or 40. All you need is a work ethic. It's what allows you to push through moments of disappointment and self-doubt and fear.

Women with money and women in power are two uncomfortable ideas in our society.

I sometimes read in a gossip column that I was at a party when I was in Europe at the time. It sometimes feels I've got a Doppelganger somewhere.

The '90s are really the 'Sex and the City' woman, and I think, right now, the new contemporary woman is the 'Lipstick Jungle' woman.

I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.

I wish I was one of those persnickety types who buys guidebooks and studies them, but I don't have the inclination or time. I'm more of a 'get on the plane, arrive at the destination and see what happens' kind of traveler.

The reality about being economically dependent on someone else usually doesn't work out for women in the end. It's about being an adult and being responsible for your life. Most women have to work, so let's just get on with it.

I'm looking forward to writing more novels for young adults.

My decorating and renovation skills are nil - indeed, I once used a shower curtain from Pottery Barn as 'window dressing.

The most important thing to strive for in life is some kind of personal and professional achievement. Not as a man or a woman, but as a person.

I have a house in the Connecticut countryside where you'll always find me, summer or winter.

'Lipstick Jungle' was on the air for 20 episodes - I loved 'Lipstick Jungle.'

Growing up, nobody I knew even knew a writer. So it was a big adventure and something that I've wrestled with my whole life. I think it's a journey worth taking, really finding out who you are and what you do well.

The joke that I make is that there are instances on the TV series that happen to me, - except on Sex and the City they always make it better or worse than real life and I am actually saying that in a joking way.

The women I know who have children and have careers, they seem to be very happy. They love their children and they love their jobs. But happiness comes out of being willing to do your work in your twenties to find out who you are, what you love.

New York is a city where people are ambitious. They want things.

I actually don't shop very much. I have a tendency to rotate a few pairs of ripped jeans and an old cashmere sweater.

I have to tell you, TV is an incredibly difficult medium. The most challenging show to do is the hour long dramedy. It's a very tricky format.

I love things that are old and glittery, that come with layers of glamour and past lives.

Sometimes you have to find the passion. It comes from the inside... Everyone has to find it for themselves.

Since I had to write every week, I knew the column had to be about something I know.

I first arrived in New York in 1979. I was 19 and I was going to University in Houston, Texas, and I decided that I knew what I wanted to do and it was time to go and do it. I literally ran away from college.

I was a freelancer all through my twenties. I did about one story a month and I wanted to write fiction, so the stories that I would do were precursors to 'Sex and the City.'

I think when I was 12, I started reading Evelyn Waugh, and I loved Evelyn Waugh so much, and I thought: 'This is how the world really is. If I could be Evelyn Waugh, then I would be happy.'

I think that they're characters who women either are themselves or are their friends.

I was all excited. I'd been writing for women's magazines and felt marginalized. No one takes you seriously.

Like it or not, in the end, it's one's body. It's literally what carries you through life. There's a reason for the saying, 'If you have your health, you have everything,' and it's true. Old age, disease - these are the great equalizers.

When I first started writing the column and then the book came out, there were so many women who would come up to me and say: This is me. This is about my life, you know, and nobody has done it before. And I think that that's what they've done really successfully with the TV series, is they made women feel like it's about their lives.

The fact that a man is open to being with an older woman suggests that he doesn't give a hang what other people think of him. More likely, he's confident, open-minded and willing to make his own rules.

What I tried to do with the characters is put them in the same situation that powerful and successful men often find themselves, ... I'm fascinated by what it's like to be a woman in one of those powerful positions because there is really no road map about how you're supposed to behave. Just as society needs to re-evaluate our ideas about femininity and what women can do, we as women need to re-evaluate our ideas about it too.

We need to encourage young women to find what they love to do. That is a very valuable pursuit - more so than the pursuit of a boyfriend. When you have that core, you bring that core to every aspect of your life.

To me, now being in my 40s and a bit more successful, it makes you feel a little bit more generous toward other people. You don't have to male-bash.

If you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy

Well I actually do have a country house in Connecticut with a population of 3,000. Like, how small is that? I spend a lot of time there - I write up there. So I kind of have the best of both worlds and I love going up there.

When I started writing 'Sex and the City,' I was writing about women I knew in New York who were in their 30s. In a way, this is the women I was writing about in 'Sex and the City' 10 years later. They're more grown-up, more established. They've found their ways,

Even as a kid, I never liked breakfast. I just don't like to eat then. I like to get up and work. I think sticking a whole bunch of carbohydrates in your stomach in the morning is probably the worst way to begin the day.

I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.

The women in this book have realized that you can't completely rely on men, ... Women have got to rely on themselves.

Sometimes you have to find the passion. It comes from the inside. ... Everyone has to find it for themselves.

One has to be open-minded when the right man comes along. And I know it's freaky, but this just seems like the natural thing to do.

As I'm writing, certain things become clear to me and certain things begin to feel right and make sense. The pieces start to fall into place.

That was a character I created -- my alter ego 10 years ago. She was like me,

That's what's great about life, ... You don't have to keep doing things you did in your 30s. Besides it's not really a good look being in a club when you're 46 years old. The people in the clubs could be your children.

That's kind of a difficult question, because people say I'm one of the people who started it ... but I think my books are much more satirical.

You need characters who want things. They want love, they want recognition, they want happiness.

This is about women trying to become their own Mr. Big for themselves. It's about the new kind of successful career women who we're seeing on the pages of Fortune magazine.

They're not looking to meet Mr Big. They're looking to become Mr Big.

It's a job. When I'm writing I'm going to do it five to six days a week and I'm going to work for four to six hours a day. There's no magic writing fairy. It's just hard work.

The novel asks the question, why shouldn't a woman be as successful as a man, and what does it take to get there? And if a woman wants to have a successful career, a happy marriage, and children... what personal sacrifices does she need to make?

It was like time began to reverse, and somehow they managed to look better and younger-looking than they had in their thirties,

It's really about the challenges, dreams and fears of contemporary, modern women.

I haven't signed any deals yet, but there's a lot of interest. Nothing's been finalized, but hopefully it will be in the next couple of weeks.

I certainly don't want to be out till 4 to 5 in the morning now -- I don't want to do that anymore,

Patent leather wedges-they were big when I went to prom!

Have I ever been in love? Really in love? And why is it that with each new guy I think I'm more in love with him than the last?

Love is spiritual. It's about self-sacrifice and commitment. And discipline. You cannot have true love without discipline and respect. When you lose the respect of your spouse, you've lost everything.

Oh I don't plan on getting married. It's a legalized form of prostitution.

Rule number three: Best friends always think you deserve the best guy even if the best guy barely knows you exist.

I can only hope he's an Aries and not a Scorpio.

I don't like to think of myself as a 'virgin'. I prefer to think of myself as 'sexually incomplete'. You know. Like I haven't finished the course yet.

I know I have to do the right thing. And the sooner you do the right thing, the better. You get it over with, and you don't have to worry about it anymore. But who does that in real life? Instead, you procrastinate and think about it and put it off and think about it some more until that one little pebble grows into a giant block inside your head.

I think that one of the things that has changed the perception is that there are so many more single people. In New York City, it's 47 percent. When you have that many people who are single, they have a bigger voice and they're more willing to speak and say, 'We're not miserable, we're not sitting at home waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right, we're having a good time.' And I think single people have better friendships.

Out of all the neighborhoods in Manhattan, Soho in particular had the charged atmosphere of a movie set, populated with passersby who looked like extras from Central Casting, so perfectly did they fit into this environment. There was the feeling of everything being not quite real, or too perfectly cliched to actually be true, and it began to rain in a fine, misty drizzle from a black patent leather sky.

When I was 8, I was reading a book in which it was snowing. When I looked outside, I expected there to be snow on the ground. I thought, "This is the most powerful thing I can do! I'm going to be a writer."

Well I actually do have a country house in Connecticut with a population of 3,000. Like, how small is that? I spend a lot of time there - I write up there. So I kind of have the best of both worlds and I love going up there.

Why do I keep evading my work? Is it because I’m afraid of being confronted by my lack of abilities?

I didn't want it to be this way." "Yes, you did," she said, "because it is." "I just want to be with someone normal," he said. "I just want to have a normal life." "Excuse me," she said. "You're a little crazy," he said. "You're too old to act the way you do. You've got to grow up. You've got to take care of yourdelf. I'm afraid for you. You can't think that people are going to take care of you all the time.

The universe may not always play fair, but at least it's got a hell of a sense of humor.

Well in the book Carrie was my alter ego. In real life, Sarah Jessica and I don't look anything alike. But people do say that we sound alike. Sarah Jessica is an adorable girl and she is very funny.

A glittering disco ball spins from the ceiling, but the music is something I've never heard, discordant and haunting and insistent, the kind of music that demands you dance.

What I have yet to see is a real woman choose a younger man because he spent six hours a day at the gym trying to sculpt his abs.

There's so many things that mattered so much in my 20s and 30s that don't matter now.

The '80s was all about this idea that women could have it all. You could have a career, and you could have a husband, and you could have children.

Rule number one: Why is it that the one time a cute guy talks to you, you have a friend who's in crisis?

Sometimes I want to be on 'The Real Housewives of New York.' I want to remind them to figure out how to get along and support each other.

She didn't want to have anything to do with the party. She was tired of feeling like she didn't fit in, but she didn't want to go home, either, because she was a tired of being lonely and she was a little drunk.

It was the first honest emotional connection I'd had in a while. So I immediately panicked and had to leave.

When you're alone, it's easier," she said a little wistfully. "You can do what you want. You don't have to go home.

You don't want to peak in high school. If you do, the rest of your life is a disaster.

Meanwhile I'll probably see him again. That's how sick I am.

. . . She was obsessed with clothes and status, how she never gave a thought to being responsible for her own actions, or even what she might do for anyone else-making her the ultimate example of all that was wrong and misguided about young women today.

I've always thought there are two ways of getting what you wanted in life.Forcing people to give it to you,or making them want to give it to you.

There are so many beautiful girls around that after a while you start looking for someone who can make you laugh

Always look like you know where you're going, even when you don't

And if you were always spending your time getting over your past, how were you supposed to get on with your future?

All those men who end up disappointing you. After a while, you don't even want to have feelings anymore. You just want to get on with your life.

I'm certainly not going to put my life on hold for him.

Sometimes I think all the trouble in the world is caused by men. If there were no men, women would always be happy. ~Carrie

I do not pick the wrong guys. They pick me.

It's always the people who don't want things who get them.

Grace was one of those types who never changed but only aged and had no apparent expectations or ambitions other than the wish that her life should remain the same.

That's the difference between girls and women: Girls find men fascinating. Women know better.

Maybe mistakes are what make our fate... without them what would shape our lives? Maybe if we had never veered off course we wouldn't fall in love, have babies, or be who we are. After all, things change, so do cities, people come into your life and they go. But it's comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart... and if you're very lucky, a plane ride away

Zizi was young and often confused about how to live his life, �and when he made a choice he clung to it with fierce resolve, �as if to beat his uncertainty into submission.