Jean Kerr (1922–2003,) born Bridget Jean Collins, was an American novelist and playwright. An acerbic comic writer, she is remembered for her plays and for her humorous prose on domestic themes.
Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Kerr got a B.A. from Marywood College in Scranton in 1943 and an MFA degree from Catholic University in 1945. She wrote the plays Touch and Go (1949,) King of Hearts (1954,) and Mary (1961;) her husband, the drama critic Walter F. Kerr, directed the performances.
Kerr is best known for her bestselling Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1957,) a collection of comic sketches on domestic life. It was adapted as a popular motion picture starring Doris Day and David Niven, and later as a television series starring Patricia Crowley and Mark Miller.
Kerr also wrote the plays Poor Richard (1964,) Finishing Touches (1973,) and Lunch Hour (1980,) and the humorous prose works The Snake Has All the Lines (1960,) Penny Candy (1970,) and How I Got to Be Perfect (1978.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jean Kerr
You don’t seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Unhappiness, Poverty, The Poor
One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is the assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind.
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Health
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
—Jean Kerr
I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want—an adorable pancreas?
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Beauty
Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left.
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Divorce
Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Hope
If you have formed the habit of checking on every new diet that comes along, you will find that, mercifully, they all blur together, leaving you with only one definite piece of information: french-fried potatoes are out.
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Diet, Weight
Marrying a man is like buying something you’ve been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn’t always go with everything else in the house.
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Men, Marriage
If you can keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs, its just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Adversity, Understanding, Just for Fun
Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite.
—Jean Kerr
Topics: Hypocrisy
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