Politics & Power Quote by Jackie Collins

Jackie Collins is selling two fantasies at once: the American dream and the promise that her version of it comes uncut. On the surface, the line is bootstrap comfort food - decide, work, win. But Collins always understood that aspiration isn’t just a moral story; it’s a marketplace. “Set your mind” sounds wholesome, even corny, until it’s welded to the brand claim: “My fans know they’re getting the real thing.” That pivot gives away the real intent. She’s not merely describing her themes; she’s defending her territory.

The subtext is a savvy rebuke to the literary establishment that long treated her as guilty pleasure rather than “serious” novelist. Collins made her career writing about money, sex, fame, and power in a way that refused to apologize. By insisting on “the real thing,” she’s winking at the hypocrisy of culture gatekeepers: they sneer at her glamour while consuming the same appetites she dramatizes. Authenticity here doesn’t mean purity; it means consistency. The books deliver the rush they advertise, and that reliability is its own kind of truth.

Context matters: Collins rose as a woman writing commercially dominant, female-centered scandal in an industry eager to diminish it. Her American dream is less about virtue than velocity - self-invention, reinvention, and the refusal to be shamed for wanting more. She frames her readers not as dupes but as co-conspirators, people who recognize that “real” can be a tone, a taboo, a punchline, and a business model.