Top 80 Jen Lancaster Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I tried, it was hard, I quit, the end. Story of my life.”

— Jen Lancaster

2. “I don’t care how happily married you are or how deeply enmeshed you are with your children and family and career – every woman needs a couple of chicks who’ll break out the sangria just because you need to vent.”

— Jen Lancaster

3. “I’m not lazy. I’m simply judicious about excess movement.”

— Jen Lancaster

4. “Sometimes compromise tastes like caramel macchiato.”

— Jen Lancaster

5. “Despite my best efforts, I’m not quite perfect. Let’s just say I’m like one of those Hopi blankets where they leave a tiny flaw so as to not affront the Lord.”

— Jen Lancaster

6. “Maybe I’ve moved to the dark side, but it’s clean and nice and we never run out of toilet paper.”

— Jen Lancaster

7. “I’ve determined the ideal job for me is one where I can write clever essays about my life and my employer will give me enough money not only to live a comfortable existence, but also to buy many, many new pairs of shoes.”

— Jen Lancaster

8. “Kiss the fattest part of my ass.”

— Jen Lancaster

9. “I still believe in the Holy Trinity, except now it’s Target, Trader Joe’s, and IKEA.”

— Jen Lancaster

10. “As I examine my life through this book, I can’t help but wonder if my mother was right. Maybe I really was what I ate. And maybe if she’d let me eat a little more sugar, I’d have come out sweeter.”

— Jen Lancaster

11. “I yearn to be a woman of more depth, but I’m not so fond of the path I’d need to follow to get there.”

— Jen Lancaster

12. “Ambien might have mentally just tossed my salad. WITH CROUTONS.”

— Jen Lancaster

13. “I believe that I have such a vanilla life.”

— Jen Lancaster

14. “Let me phrase it like this – do you want to live in the kitchen for the next four days, sweating your ass off while you make a meal it will take twenty minutes to eat? Do you want to attack a pile of dishes for three hours afterward? Do you want to spend a week eating old turkey and cranberry sauce because.”

— Jen Lancaster

15. “I’m very detail oriented. I think that’s why people enjoy my memoirs – because I tend to remember everything.”

— Jen Lancaster

16. “Owning a dog is slightly less expensive than being addicted to crack.”

— Jen Lancaster

17. “Fortunately, all it takes for us to be of one mind is some buttercream frosting.”

— Jen Lancaster

18. “Today, we’re a beeper generation in a smartphone world.”

— Jen Lancaster

19. “I never sleep on the plane. I have to be awake and using my mind power to keep it in the air.”

— Jen Lancaster

20. “In real life, I tend to yell at people a lot. Not because I’m bossy or mean, but because I’m frustrated.”

— Jen Lancaster

21. “This is terrific! What fun! Maybe tomorrow I can go to the prom with my brother. The day after, perhaps I can wear white pants and unexpectedly get my period.”

— Jen Lancaster

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22. “I can’t believe anyone would voluntarily run 26 miles. Sometimes I sit on the couch cross-legged because I don’t feel like walking to the bathroom.”

— Jen Lancaster

23. “I would rather receive a Pap smear from Captain Hook than venture out on New Year’s Eve.”

— Jen Lancaster

24. “When did the cell phone become a license to be rude? And why must I be subjected to your personal conversations?”

— Jen Lancaster

25. “We are middle-aged. This is what happens. All the same nonsense that comes with puberty occurs again during perimenopause – the hormone surges, the moodiness, and the hair appearing where there wasn’t hair before. Except instead of filling in under the arms and on nether regions, these coarse follicles of hate are showing up on our freaking faces.”

— Jen Lancaster

26. “You think you’re so cool just because you can walk!”

— Jen Lancaster

27. “I’ve always been able to cook Italian food. That’s in my blood because I’m half Sicilian.”

— Jen Lancaster

28. “Ultimately, my goal in life is to arrive at the finish line without having regrets.”

— Jen Lancaster

29. “Some people are destined to be deep thinkers. I am not one of those people.”

— Jen Lancaster

30. “Over the summer we chatted one night while Angie stripped a bed, changed wet sheets, comforted and repajamaed a toddler, and chased down a car of speeding teenagers while shaking a brick at them, never once interrupting the conversation or setting down her margarita. The only reason this woman isn’t president of General Motors is because she’s chosen not to be.”

— Jen Lancaster

31. “This way, when I do have something like special-occasion engagement cake, I can enjoy the whole damn thing without a twinge of remorse. I.”

— Jen Lancaster

32. “You know what else I haven’t seen? Home stores. I’ve not passed the equivalent of Restoration Hardware or Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn, so I get the feeling that no one’s killing themselves working double shifts so they can consume stuff to make their homes Pinterest-perfect. Maybe the Roman message is to not let your stuff own you.”

— Jen Lancaster

33. “Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to say yes, only to have my plans fall through at the last minute and I can take off my regular-people clothes and redon my paint-splattered yoga pants.”

— Jen Lancaster

34. “No matter how happy anyone is with their choices, I believe it’s human nature to wonder about the path not taken.”

— Jen Lancaster

35. “The best thing about being 45 is not taking myself so seriously.”

— Jen Lancaster

36. “Butterflies are a lot like rainbows: They’re phenomenally beautiful in real life, yet no graphic representation can do them justice; ergo, it’s best to forgo.”

— Jen Lancaster

37. “At my age, I feel like I’m halfway to the finish line and life’s too short to do what I’m sure to hate.”

— Jen Lancaster

38. “The difference between social media and a social life is the difference between eating a marshmallow Peep and dining on a tomahawk-cut rib eye: one is substantial and nutritious; the other is just a momentarily satisfying puff of sweetened air, offering no long-term benefits. I can enjoy the fluff, but I can’t subsist on it.”

— Jen Lancaster

39. “Anyone who grew up in a household where carob passed for chocolate and apple pies were actually filled with zucchini will feel me here.”

— Jen Lancaster

40. “What about my Girls Gone Mild life leads you to believe I’m a body shot shy of debauchery? Is it the pearls?”

— Jen Lancaster

41. “You don’t have to be a writer, though, to know that making fun of yourself is a good way to deflect being made fun of. Like many people, I am hypercritical about myself so that I beat the haters to the punch. When I acknowledge my foibles first, no one else can use them against me. I’ve taken away everyone else’s power to make me feel less about myself by doing it first.”

— Jen Lancaster

42. “No, it’s not a ‘corpse thing.’ I feel I lack the emotional capacity to deal with those in mourning...”

— Jen Lancaster

43. “Can I tell you something about Seattle? Everyone there is a filthy liar. They’re all, ‘Don’t move to Seattle – it’s so rainy!’ And yet every time I’ve been there, a tiny amount of rain falls before the whole sky explodes into rainbows and sunlight. Seattleites mean to hog up all the stunning vistas and good coffee and flowering bushes for themselves. Bet on it.”

— Jen Lancaster

44. “I’m a humor writer, so I don’t always present myself in the best light.”

— Jen Lancaster

45. “I’ve always wanted to take a swim wherever it is they snap those screensaver photos – Fiji? Bora Bora? The Maldives? – and sleep in a hotel room that’s more of a hut built on a dock over the water. After reading The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, I’m dying to see the sun set in Botswana. I want to visit Indian temples and volunteer at an elephant sanctuary.”

— Jen Lancaster

46. “You can’t all of a sudden go to sleep one night and wake up Martha Stewart. It’s bit by bit by bit.”

— Jen Lancaster

47. “I’m such a fangirl when it comes to other writers. I read 250 books a year, and I’m always talking up books by other authors.”

— Jen Lancaster

48. “If I may, I’d like to take a moment to praise Mark Zuckerberg’s parents for not procreating sooner. Praise be to all that is holy that Facebook didn’t exist when I was that age and the Internet then was but a Usenet group for Star Trek fans. I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have grown up when cameras used actual film because the only thing that stood between infamy and me was the clerk who developed photos at Walgreens. Thank God for him.”

— Jen Lancaster

49. “I’m not one of those folks who have to face death to live life. I.”

— Jen Lancaster

50. “The living room is a monument to my impulsive spending habits. I’ve got more than two hundred DVDs, including cinematic greats such as Monkey Bone, Corkey Romano, and A Night at the Roxbury, leading me to believe not only do I have awful taste in films, but I also have a Chris Kattan fixation. What I don’t have is $4000 earing intrest in a money market account.”

— Jen Lancaster