Top 100 Fran Lebowitz Quotes
#1. If you're going to America, bring your own food.
Fran Lebowitz
#2. I'm such a slow writer I have no need for anything as fast as a word processor. I don't need anything so snappy. I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.
Fran Lebowitz
#3. The great thing about New Jersey is that it's close to New York.
Fran Lebowitz
#4. I have the exact opposite problem of every writer I've ever met: Every writer I've ever met writes things that are too long, and they have to edit them down.
Fran Lebowitz
#5. The downfall of most diets is that they restrict your intake of food.
Fran Lebowitz
#6. I don't like the kind of country living where you have to help. I like country living where there is help.
Fran Lebowitz
#7. Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step - it is an old business procedure.
Fran Lebowitz
#8. My desire to curtail undue freedom of speech extends only to such public areas as restaurants, airports, streets, hotel lobbies, parks, and department stores. Verbal exchanges between consenting adults in private are as of little interest to me as they probably are to them.
Fran Lebowitz
#9. It's very disheartening to encounter a fearful twenty-one year old. They haven't earned the right to be that afraid. It's not like we're living in war-torn Bosnia or something.
Fran Lebowitz
#10. Will power is not telling anybody you quit smoking.
Fran Lebowitz
#11. I must take issue with the term 'a mere child', for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.
Fran Lebowitz
#12. Twenty-four-hour room service generally refers to the length of time that it takes for the club sandwich to arrive. This is indeeddisheartening, particularly when you've ordered scrambled eggs.
Fran Lebowitz
#13. It is not good form to take a Trick out unless one is so firmly established as to be able to afford being associated with someone who might at any given moment write a poem in public.
Fran Lebowitz
#14. Luckily when you drive a cab there are two things: You don't have a boss in the cab with you, and you are not facing the people that you are making money from.
Fran Lebowitz
#15. Inhabitants of underdeveloped nations and victims of natural disasters are the only people who have ever been happy to see soybeans.
Fran Lebowitz
#16. If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?
Fran Lebowitz
#17. I'm not a Communist. I'm an American. I'm a capitalist. I mean, I'm not a very good capitalist, myself. I'm not very good at it, but it's not that I'm not for capitalism. But people who believe in things like corporate citizenship, it's idiotic. I mean, it shows you're an idiot.
Fran Lebowitz
#18. Life is something you do when you can't get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz
#19. That I am totally devoid of sympathy for, or interest in, the world of groups is directly attributable to the fact that my two greatest needs and desires - smoking cigarettes and plotting revenge - are basically solitary pursuits.
Fran Lebowitz
#20. Calling a taxi in Texas is like calling a rabbi in Iraq.
Fran Lebowitz
#23. In fact, we live in a culture where intelligence, exceptional or not, is reviled.
Fran Lebowitz
#24. Citizen's Band radio renders one accessible to a wide variety of people from all walks of life. It should not be forgotten that all walks of life include conceptual artists, dry cleaners, and living poets.
Fran Lebowitz
#25. There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air.
Fran Lebowitz
#26. If thine enemy offend thee, give his child a drum.
Fran Lebowitz
#27. I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don't register that impulse. It's like the impulse for wanting a dog.
Fran Lebowitz
#28. Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.
Fran Lebowitz
#29. Perhaps one of the more noteworthy trends of our time is the occupation of buildings accompanied by the taking of hostages. The perpetrators of these deeds are generally motivated by political grievance, social injustice, and the deeply felt desire to see how they look on TV.
Fran Lebowitz
#30. If you live in New York and you have a guest room, you have guests. So I think it's best not to have a guest room.
Fran Lebowitz
#31. Life is so absurd now that it is almost impossible to be a satirist in this era.
Fran Lebowitz
#32. If people had gavels, there would be no wars. If every person in the world had a gavel and could bang it and get everyone's attention right away and make their displeasure known, I believe the level of actual violence in the world would just disappear to practically nothing.
Fran Lebowitz
#33. I drank my lifetime supply of alcohol and I took my lifetime supply of drugs between the ages of 15 and 19.
Fran Lebowitz
#36. To lose yourself in a book is the desire of the bookworm. I mean to be taken. That is my desire.
Fran Lebowitz
#38. Don't bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add.
Fran Lebowitz
#39. Think before you speak. Read before you think.
Fran Lebowitz
#40. I'd like to decide who comes here. I'd like to be the admissions director of New York.
Fran Lebowitz
#41. The 3 questions of greatest concern are:, 1) Is it attractive?, 2) Is it amusing?, 3) Does it know its place?
Fran Lebowitz
#42. I'm like the laziest person who ever lived. It's amazing to me I even sit up.
Fran Lebowitz
#43. Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut??
Fran Lebowitz
#44. The Italians are the most civilized people. And they're very warm. Basically, they're Jews with great architecture.
Fran Lebowitz
#46. Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in mood, children will persist in discussing the color of a recently sighted cement-mixer long after one's own interest in the topic has waned.
Fran Lebowitz
#47. It's much easier to write a solemn book than a funny book. It's harder to make people laugh than it is to make them cry. People are always on the verge of tears.
Fran Lebowitz
#48. Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky.
Fran Lebowitz
#49. I think one manifestation of integrity is holding a grudge. Saying no is a little different. Holding a grudge is the modern equivalent of having standards.
Fran Lebowitz
#50. The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat.
Fran Lebowitz
#51. If you can stay in love for more than two years, you're on something.
Fran Lebowitz
#52. [On not reading newspapers:] If something important happens, your mother calls you.
Fran Lebowitz
#53. People who get married because they're in love make a ridiculous mistake. It makes much more sense to marry your best friend. You like your best friend more than anyone you're ever going to be in love with. You dont choose your best friend because they have a cute nose.
Fran Lebowitz
#54. Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy
Fran Lebowitz
#55. Scientists are rarely to be counted among the fun people. Awkward at parties, shy with strangers, deficient in irony - they have had no choice but to turn their attention to the close study of everyday objects.
Fran Lebowitz
#56. What starts love is your ability to stupefy and blind yourself to the point of being able to fall in love. What stops it is waking up.
Fran Lebowitz
#57. I drove a cab. But all the girls I knew when I was young who had to work - there were rich girls - but the ones who had to work were waitresses. Because you could always get shifts in a restaurant.
Fran Lebowitz
#58. When you reach a certain age, suddenly there are lots of people younger than you, which is really startling.
Fran Lebowitz
#59. I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word - politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
Fran Lebowitz
#60. The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.
Fran Lebowitz
#61. No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.
Fran Lebowitz
#62. I never met anyone who didn't have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?
Fran Lebowitz
#63. I'm not interested in being a wife. I'm interested in being an empress.
Fran Lebowitz
#64. You should make it hard on yourself to write so you're easier to read.
Fran Lebowitz
#65. The truth is that most families have no smart ones and no pretty ones. Most families are a bunch of unattractive dopes. And it turns out that the Bush family, like most families, has no smart ones. I was not surprised to see this.
Fran Lebowitz
#66. I think humor is warmer, and wit is colder. Wit is judgment, whereas humor invites some sort of response.
Fran Lebowitz
#67. To me the outdoors is what you must pass through in order to get from your apartment into a taxicab.
Fran Lebowitz
#68. I've never had the experience of being edited and never will.
Fran Lebowitz
#69. When someone asks, 'Why do you think he's not calling me?' there's always one answer - 'He's not interested.' There's not ever any other answer.
Fran Lebowitz
#70. People elect the President for reasons that have nothing to do with his ability to be president.
Fran Lebowitz
#71. Writing is so hard. Why would you be a writer if you weren't really good at it? If you could be anything else, why would you be a writer?
Fran Lebowitz
#72. A book is not supposed to be a mirror. It's supposed to be a door.
Fran Lebowitz
#73. Presently it appears that people are mainly concerned with being well rested. Those capable of uninterrupted sleep are much admired. Unconsciousness is in great demand. This is the day of the milligram.
Fran Lebowitz
#74. It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.
Fran Lebowitz
#77. I love being in love. I don't think anything compares with it, though I consider it very disruptive.
Fran Lebowitz
#78. Whenever I am doing anything else, which is most of the time, even if it is not something like robbing a bank, I feel felonious. Writing is what I'm supposed to be doing.
Fran Lebowitz
#79. If you are truly serious abut preparing your child for the future, don't teach him to subtract teach him to deduct.
Fran Lebowitz
#80. No one I knew talked about money. It's not an area of interest.
Fran Lebowitz
#81. I hate, simply, to work. I just hate to work, period. I am profoundly slothful. Practically inert.
Fran Lebowitz
#82. Most writers write too much. I have the exact opposite problem. I feel I could write almost anything in a paragraph. I have a natural ability to condense, and so I often think, "Are you kidding me? Five thousand words? How am I gonna make 5,000 words out of that?"
Fran Lebowitz
#83. Children ask better questions than adults. "May I have a cookie?" "Why is the sky blue?" and "What does a cow say?" are far more likely to elicit a cheerful response than "Where's your manuscript?" "Why haven't you called?" and "Who's your lawyer?"
Fran Lebowitz
#84. Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women, it is simply a good excuse not to play football.
Fran Lebowitz
#86. Violet will be a good color for hair at just about the same time that brunette becomes a good color for flowers.
Fran Lebowitz
#87. A woman's quest in life should be to find the perfect apartment. And I have found the perfect apartment. The perfect apartment is the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum. With a sofa.
Fran Lebowitz
#88. People who are well-known, famous people, I think, make very poor characters for fiction. They make good characters for gossip columns. But not for fiction.
Fran Lebowitz
#89. There were a zillion bad jobs. That doesn't exist any more. I mean, I could wake up one afternoon with zero money and know that by the end of the day, I would have money.
Fran Lebowitz
#90. Ever since I was a little child, I refused to see movies of books that I loved. Because you already know what Heidi looks like and she doesn't look like Shirley Temple.
Fran Lebowitz
#91. If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would pretty much be left with Let's Make a Deal.
Fran Lebowitz
#92. Communism requires of its adherents that they arise early and participate in a strenuous round of calisthenics. To someone who wishes that cigarettes came already lit the thought of such exertion at an hour when decent people are just nodding off is thoroughly abhorrent.
Fran Lebowitz
#93. I never had a typewriter. I never had any machines.
Fran Lebowitz
#94. Without these tourists, New York would be fantastic. I don't want them to come. Stay home!
Fran Lebowitz
#95. If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail.
Fran Lebowitz
#96. There are too many books. The books are terrible. And this is because you have been taught to have self-esteem.
Fran Lebowitz
#97. I believe in talking behind peoples' backs. That way, they hear it more than once.
Fran Lebowitz
#98. When I started publishing, I got offers to write for big magazines. But I would always say, "Well, it's not that I don't want to write for these big magazines, but you can't edit it."
Fran Lebowitz
#99. My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two-thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature, I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish.
Fran Lebowitz
#100. [On the writers she admires:] I prefer dead writers, because I don't see them at parties.
Fran Lebowitz
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