Art & Creativity Quote by Jackie Collins

Collins isn’t handing out a dainty creative-writing aphorism; she’s issuing a pragmatic command dressed as encouragement. “Whatever you have a passion for, then you must do” is less self-help than work ethic: desire isn’t a mood, it’s an obligation. The word “must” matters. It takes passion out of the realm of identity (“I’m a writer”) and shoves it into behavior (“I write”). Coming from a novelist who built a brand on unapologetic page-turners and female appetite - sexual, social, ambitious - the line reads like a refusal to let taste-makers define what counts as legitimate art.

Then she snaps the romantic balloon with a craft note: “If you want to write, write about something you know about.” That’s not a plea for autobiography so much as a warning against performative literature. Collins made a career mining recognizable worlds - power, glamour, money, desire - and translating them into narrative velocity. “Know about” can mean lived experience, but it can also mean researched fluency: the authority to name details without flinching. Subtext: readers can smell cosplay. You don’t get to fake intimacy, whether it’s with a setting, a class, a relationship dynamic, or a scandal.

Context sharpens the intent. Collins worked in a culture that routinely dismissed commercial women writers as “guilty pleasures.” Her advice is a quiet counterattack: trust your obsessions, then earn them on the page with specificity. Passion is the fuel; knowledge is the proof.