Art & Creativity Quote by Jackie Collins

Collins isn’t offering a genteel craft tip; she’s throwing a drink in the face of literary cosplay. “Do not copy my style!” reads like a warning and a dare: if you’re trying to write like her, you’ve already missed the point of why her work landed. The imperative voice matters here. She’s policing authenticity, not as some precious artistic virtue, but as a survival strategy in a culture that rewards imitation until it punishes you for being derivative.

The punchline is the pivot from “style” to “knowledge.” Collins targets a very specific kind of fraud: writing that performs expertise without paying its dues in lived experience. “Not what you think you know” is a jab at the armchair expert, the writer who borrows borrowed confidence. It’s also a quiet rebuke of a publishing world that has often treated women’s commercial fiction as disposable, even when it’s built on sharp observation of power, sex, money, and hypocrisy. Collins is saying: my authority comes from paying attention to real rooms, real conversations, real consequences.

The subtext is more generous than it sounds. “Think about what you’ve done in your life” doesn’t mean you need a glamorous résumé; it means you already have material with texture: embarrassment, desire, grudges, tenderness, the compromises you’re not proud of. Collins, who turned scandal and aspiration into page-turning realism, is arguing that the most sellable voice is the one you can’t counterfeit.