5 Great Quotes From the Late Jackie Collins

The family of Jackie Collins announced last night that the author of steamy novels had died at 77 of breast cancer, reports People. Collins followed actor sister Joan to Hollywood from the UK and became a star in own right, selling more than 500 million copies of her books. Maybe the height of her fame came in the 1980s with Hollywood Wives, which sold 15 million copies—while her sister was starring on Dynasty, notes AP. Her book spawned a TV miniseries of the same name. Some quotes collected from the various obituaries, including Reuters and the Los Angeles Times:

• "A lot of people say to me, 'Oh, I read your books under a cover with a flashlight when I was really young and I learned everything I know about sex from you.'"

• After the release of her first book, The World is Full of Married Men, in 1968, romance novelist "Barbara Cartland said to me, 'Oh, Miss Collins, your books are filthy and disgusting and you are responsible for all the perverts in England.' I pause for a few moments and said, 'Thank you.'"
• "If anything, my characters are toned down—the truth is much more bizarre."
• "I'm not grammatical in the way I talk, or in the way I write, and I don't pretend to be. I'm a high school dropout who eavesdrops."
• "I did it my way, as Frank Sinatra would say. I've written five books since the diagnosis, I've lived my life, I've traveled all over the world, I have not turned down book tours and no one has ever known until now when I feel as though I should come out with it," Collins told People in 2014 of her cancer diagnosis about five years earlier. "Now I want to save other people's lives."

(More Jackie Collins stories.)