"As long as the plots keep arriving from outer space, I'll go on with my virgins"
About this Quote
Cartland’s line is a wink disguised as a work ethic: keep feeding me inspiration, and I’ll keep feeding you innocence. The “plots…from outer space” bit does two jobs at once. It flatters her own productivity by pretending she’s merely the receiver of transmissions, not the architect of an industrial romance machine. And it ridicules the very idea of originality in formula fiction: stories don’t have to be plausible, just plentiful. Outer space is shorthand for the arbitrary, the endlessly renewable, the deus ex supply chain.
Then come “my virgins,” a phrase that lands with proprietary confidence. She isn’t talking about women so much as a signature product: the Cartland heroine, packaged in purity, safety, and certainty. The possessive “my” signals brand control, and the casualness suggests she knows exactly what she’s selling. There’s subtextual defensiveness too: critics mocked her for repetitive plots and archaic sexual politics, so she preempts them with a joke that turns accusation into inevitability. If the world keeps buying fantasies, she’ll keep manufacturing the clean version.
Context matters: Cartland wrote hundreds of novels in a 20th-century Britain where sexual mores were loosening and popular culture was getting louder, messier, and more explicit. Her virgins are a deliberate refuge - not just from sex, but from ambiguity. The quip works because it’s both self-parody and self-justification: she’s admitting the formula while daring you to pretend you don’t crave it.
Then come “my virgins,” a phrase that lands with proprietary confidence. She isn’t talking about women so much as a signature product: the Cartland heroine, packaged in purity, safety, and certainty. The possessive “my” signals brand control, and the casualness suggests she knows exactly what she’s selling. There’s subtextual defensiveness too: critics mocked her for repetitive plots and archaic sexual politics, so she preempts them with a joke that turns accusation into inevitability. If the world keeps buying fantasies, she’ll keep manufacturing the clean version.
Context matters: Cartland wrote hundreds of novels in a 20th-century Britain where sexual mores were loosening and popular culture was getting louder, messier, and more explicit. Her virgins are a deliberate refuge - not just from sex, but from ambiguity. The quip works because it’s both self-parody and self-justification: she’s admitting the formula while daring you to pretend you don’t crave it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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