Time & Perspective Quote by Jilly Cooper

Domestic longing has a funny way of sounding like confession and alibi at once, and Jilly Cooper leans into that doubleness. On the surface, it reads like a simple declaration of priorities: family over travel, home over the glamorous elsewhere. Underneath, it’s a quiet stage direction about what kind of public figure she wants to be seen as - not the untethered, jet-setting author, but the woman anchored by ordinary affection. That contrast matters because “abroad” carries a whole cultural bundle: success, promotion, the literary circuit, the expectation that a writer should be perpetually available to festivals, interviews, and foreign editions. By admitting she “miss[es] them all dreadfully,” Cooper punctures the fantasy that professional ascent is purely thrilling.

The wording is doing careful work. “Really like” is politely emphatic, the kind of British understatement that signals genuine craving without melodrama. “Spend more time” implies scarcity; the family isn’t just loved, they’re being rationed by a schedule. Then the emotional punch lands with “dreadfully,” a slightly old-fashioned intensifier that makes the ache feel both sincere and socially legible, more drawing-room than diary, but still sharp.

Contextually, it fits Cooper’s larger brand: a writer associated with bright, socially observant storytelling who also understands the performance of respectability. This isn’t a radical critique of work; it’s a controlled reveal of the cost of being in demand, offered in the safest possible currency: devotion to the people waiting at home.