Top 100 Fran Lebowitz Quotes
#1. I built a career on negative reviews. I didn't get a good review ever until Fran Lebowitz gave me a good review in Interview. That was the first good review I got in 10 years.
John Waters
#2. If Fran Lebowitz and Ian Fleming had blessed the world with a love child it would have been author J. Fields Jr.
Edward Medina
#3. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. It's much more relaxing to actually write.
Fran Lebowitz
#4. If you're going to America, bring your own food.
Fran Lebowitz
#5. The thing you love right away, don't do it, because that's the very thing that's going to be your addiction for the rest of your life.
Fran Lebowitz
#6. If I lived in another country, like a country that was, say, an enemy of the United States, I would be more amused than I am.
Fran Lebowitz
#7. A dog who thinks he is a man's best friend is a dog who obviously has never met a tax lawyer.
Fran Lebowitz
#8. There are two modes of transport in Los Angeles: car and ambulance. Visitors who wish to remain inconspicuous are advised to choose the latter
Fran Lebowitz
#9. Donald Trump is not my fault. You can blame certain things on me, but not Donald Trump.
Fran Lebowitz
#10. 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
#11. Telling someone he looks healthy isn't a compliment
it's a second opinion.
Fran Lebowitz
#12. The great thing about New Jersey is that it's close to New York.
Fran Lebowitz
#13. 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
#15. The downfall of most diets is that they restrict your intake of food.
Fran Lebowitz
#16. Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz
#17. I walk a lot in New York, not for the exercise but to get from place to place, and because it's the way of having the least contact with human beings.
Fran Lebowitz
#18. I don't like the kind of country living where you have to help. I like country living where there is help.
Fran Lebowitz
#19. Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step - it is an old business procedure.
Fran Lebowitz
#20. By the time everyone catches up with you, you're bored.
Fran Lebowitz
#21. 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
#22. When I'm supposed to be writing I clean my apartment, take my clothes to the laundry, get organized, make lists, do the dishes. I would never do a dish unless I had to write.
Fran Lebowitz
#23. The only appropriate response to the question, 'Can I be frank?' is, 'Yes, if I can be Barbara.
Fran Lebowitz
#24. 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
#25. I never wanted to have any extra money, if it meant having to have any extra work.
Fran Lebowitz
#26. If, while watching the sun set on a used-car lot in Los Angeles, you are struck by the parallels between this image and the inevitable fate of humanity, do not, under any circumstances, write it down.
Fran Lebowitz
#27. Will power is not telling anybody you quit smoking.
Fran Lebowitz
#28. 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
#29. White grapes are very attractive but when it comes to dessert people generally like cake with icing.
Fran Lebowitz
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. Those who use the word 'lifestyle' are rarely in possession of either.
Fran Lebowitz
#34. Inhabitants of underdeveloped nations and victims of natural disasters are the only people who have ever been happy to see soybeans.
Fran Lebowitz
#35. If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies.
Fran Lebowitz
#36. Because I was young, I had this long hair, and people used to try to tip me with joints.
Fran Lebowitz
#37. If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?
Fran Lebowitz
#38. 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
#39. That which we call civilization is merely the accumulated debris of a chilling number of bad nights.
Fran Lebowitz
#40. Life is something you do when you can't get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz
#41. Knowingness is sexy. The opposite of sexy is naivete.
Fran Lebowitz
#42. 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
#43. Calling a taxi in Texas is like calling a rabbi in Iraq.
Fran Lebowitz
#44. Perhaps the least cheering statement ever made on the subject of art is that life imitates it.
Fran Lebowitz
#45. Modern science was largely conceived of as an answer to the servant problem and ... it is generally practiced by those who lack a flair for conversation.
Fran Lebowitz
#46. In Rome people spend most of their time having lunch. And they do it very well - Rome is unquestionably the lunch capital of the world.
Fran Lebowitz
#49. Any artist who has that quality of timelessness has that quality because they tell the truth.
Fran Lebowitz
#50. When I was young, I liked romance. But to me, romance is the opposite of domestic life. I just don't want anyone in the apartment, not for longer than a few hours.
Fran Lebowitz
#51. I don't like to read nonfiction. To me, fact is something I can look up.
Fran Lebowitz
#52. In fact, we live in a culture where intelligence, exceptional or not, is reviled.
Fran Lebowitz
#53. There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior.
Fran Lebowitz
#54. 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
#56. There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air.
Fran Lebowitz
#57. There is one thing that has disappeared, not just from the U.S. but from the entire world, is the idea of ever being embarrassed by anything.
Fran Lebowitz
#58. If there were, say, only 10 percent of the hotels that exist now, there would be all these apartments for people who live in New York, as opposed to people visiting New York. And then all this junk in the theater, we would no longer need the kind of stuff that tourists like.
Fran Lebowitz
#59. You don't have to lay an egg to know if it tastes good.
Fran Lebowitz
#60. Chocolate is an excellent flavor for ice cream but both unreasonable and disconcerting in chewing gum.
Fran Lebowitz
#61. I write a sentence a thousand times, changing it all the time to look at it in different ways.
Fran Lebowitz
#62. I always liked people who are older. Of course, every year it gets harder to find them.
Fran Lebowitz
#63. I've never seen the Kardashians; I'm not sure who they are. But I know a lot about them because it's impossible not to.
Fran Lebowitz
#64. There's nothing like being old to be sure of everything.
Fran Lebowitz
#65. Being poor is like being a child. Being rich is like being an adult: you get to do whatever you want. Everyone is nice when they have to be; rich people are nice when they feel like it.
Fran Lebowitz
#66. There is nothing more mine than my writing, nothing I'm more proprietary about.
Fran Lebowitz
#67. Now the culture is made of old things, it's a collage. Art made out of art is not art. You're supposed to make art out of life.
Fran Lebowitz
#68. I don't believe in anything you have to believe in.
Fran Lebowitz
#69. Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won't feel like watching.
Fran Lebowitz
#70. I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.
Fran Lebowitz
#71. If thine enemy offend thee, give his child a drum.
Fran Lebowitz
#72. 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
#73. There's no such thing as advice to the lovelorn. If they took advice, they wouldn't be lovelorn.
Fran Lebowitz
#74. I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.
Fran Lebowitz
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. Middle class was defined by having certain values and only a certain amount of money. But this new middle class seems to have absolutely no values and an unlimited amount of money.
Fran Lebowitz
#78. Money ... buys privacy, silence. The less money you have, the noisier it is; the thinner your walls, the closer your neighbors ... The first thing you notice when you step into the house or apartment of a rich person is how quiet it is.
Fran Lebowitz
#79. Lifestyle. Not a word at all, really - rather a wordette. A genuine case of more is less ... the word life and the word style are, except in rare cases (and chances are that you're not of them), mutually exclusive.
Fran Lebowitz
#80. I happen to love a good run almost as much as sex. Like sex, there are often times I don't think I'm interested until I'm into it. Unlike sex, I do have to get out of bed and into the elements. I hate leaving bed.
Fran Lebowitz
#81. If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
Fran Lebowitz
#82. In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.
Fran Lebowitz
#83. 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
#84. Life is so absurd now that it is almost impossible to be a satirist in this era.
Fran Lebowitz
#85. I hate money. It is boring and it is arithmetic. The two things I hate the most.
Fran Lebowitz
#86. 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
#87. Why not have your first baby at sixty, when your husband is already dead and your career is over? Then you can really devote yourself to it.
Fran Lebowitz
#88. Breakfast cereals that come in the same colors as polyester leisure suits make oversleeping a virtue.
Fran Lebowitz
#90. Never allow your child to call you by your first name. He hasn't known you long enough.
Fran Lebowitz
#91. In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection. But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word. When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm.
Fran Lebowitz
#92. I hate writing. I will do anything to avoid it. The only way I could write less was if I was dead.
Fran Lebowitz
#94. No one's supposed to be the president. This is not England. And it's not just the Bush family, all families designate each child as having some particular trait.
Fran Lebowitz
#95. I have a double policy, which would also solve immigration: I would stand at the border of New York City and I would say, "You can come here to live, but you can't come here to visit."
Fran Lebowitz
#96. When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.
Fran Lebowitz
#97. I doubt there's ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not.
Fran Lebowitz
#98. Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast, the disk jockey is not allowed to talk.
Fran Lebowitz
#99. If people don't hold grudges, it means they just don't care what people do.
Fran Lebowitz
#100. I drank my lifetime supply of alcohol and I took my lifetime supply of drugs between the ages of 15 and 19.
Fran Lebowitz
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