Top 393 Quotes & Sayings by Fran Lebowitz - Page 2

I don't believe in anything you have to believe in.

You know, almost everyone is an irritant to me. I think people have forgotten what the word 'public' means. 'Public' means you're going to be irritated. It's a natural consequence of leaving one's home. You go outside, and there are people who are irritating. I'll be standing on the sidewalk, and someone berates me for smoking. I look at the person and think, but what about your shoes? How can you wear shoes like that and have the confidence to accost someone like me?

There's also the idea in this country [USA], it's not wholly new, but it's new in its kind of purity, in that you have to be really smart to be really rich. I always say to people, the reason people believe this is a) they've never met a really smart person, and b) they've never met a really rich person. I have met both, and I cannot see the crossover. You do not have to be a genius to get rich. You have to be ruthless to get rich.

Generally speaking, it is inhumane to detain a fleeting insight.

The downfall of most diets is that they restrict your intake of food.

I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility.

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.

I believe in talent. I know you're not supposed to believe in that anymore because you're supposed to believe if you just work hard you can do anything. That's how you succeed, maybe. But talent is something you're born with. You cannot acquire it by working hard, and you cannot lose it by lying around either.

I doubt there's ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not.

If you don't have children and you don't have a job, you have time for friendship ... People who have jobs are not the best friends to have. It's better to be friends with people who are unemployed.

You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness.

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. The second you meet someone that you're going to fall in love with you deliberately become a moron. You do this in order to fall in love, because it would be impossible to fall in love with any human being if you actually saw them for what they are.

People (a group that in my opinion has always attracted an undue amount of attention) have often been likened to snowflakes. This analogy is meant to suggest that each is unique - no two alike. This is quite patently not the case. People, even at the current rate of inflation - in fact, people especially at the current rate of inflation - are quite simply a dime a dozen. And, I hasten to add, their only similarity to snowflakes resides in their invariably and lamentable tendency to turn, after a few warm days, to slush.

I'm not interested in being a wife. I'm interested in being an empress.

Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. Because it doesn't agitate against human nature.

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?"

People always say "pop culture." As if we have some high culture to distinguish it from.

One of the big mistakes they made in Europe is that the circumstances in which you most frequently read or hear the word "race" or "racism" in Europe applies to Muslims. Which is not a race. It is a religion. You can convert to this. You cannot convert your race. I could become a Muslim. I could not become a Chinese person or a black person. So they constantly use that in Europe.

The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies - easily checkable, blatant lies - and I'm not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men - 15 of them are Saudis - and five minutes later the whole country thinks they're from Iraq - how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors.

No one earns $100 million. You steal $100 million.

China is not a great idea: capitalism and a dictator. It's like the two worst possible things you could imagine together. It's a very bad idea.

What do they do in these [private] clubs, anyway? Sit around saying things like 'Thank God I'm here. No Jews! What fun! This is living, huh? Look! No Jews! I don't know when I've had a better time. And no women! Just men! And no blacks! Just whites! White men! White men who are not Jewish! It doesn't get any better than this.' To some people, apparently, this is a perfect description of injustice. To me, this is a perfect description of a gay bar in Iceland.

Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself - a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.

Generally speaking, the poorer person summers where he winters.

Any artist who has that quality of timelessness has that quality because they tell the truth.

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.

Breakfast cereals that come in the same colors as polyester leisure suits make oversleeping a virtue.

Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy

This idea that people have to love and understand each other is absurd. It's not human nature.

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.

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.

Inhabitants of underdeveloped nations and victims of natural disasters are the only people who have ever been happy to see soybeans.

If people don't hold grudges, it means they just don't care what people do.

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.

Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don't are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn't put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a Lesbian.

When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree. When my mother explained it, I kept after her: What are you saying? What do you mean? I couldn't believe it. It was astonishing. It was like--here's the man who makes all the trees. Then I wanted to be a writer, because, I suppose, it seemed the closest thing to being God.

I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté.

It would also have been helpful to have gone to a Catholic grammar school. The only people who know grammar are those people who went to Catholic grammar school. Those nuns beat it into them.

If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you've imagined. Venice is - Venice is better.

Donald Trump is not my fault. You can blame certain things on me, but not Donald Trump.

Life is so absurd now that it is almost impossible to be a satirist in this era.

Bread that must be sliced with an axe is bread that is too nourishing.

I believe in talking behind peoples' backs. That way, they hear it more than once.

Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn't have to put them in prisons?

When you reach a certain age, suddenly there are lots of people younger than you, which is really startling.

I believe that at birth everyone gets the capacity for a certain amount of drugs and alcohol, everyone the same, you can do it all between 15 and 19 like I did, or you can stretch it out over 70 years.

The only appropriate response to the question, 'Can I be frank?' is, 'Yes, if I can be Barbara.

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.

One of the biggest changes in my lifetime, is the phenomenon of men wearing shorts. Men never wore shorts when I was young. This is one of the worst changes, by far. It's disgusting. To have to sit next to grown men on the subway in the summer, and they're wearing shorts? They look ridiculous, like children, and I can't take them seriously. My fashion advice, particularly to men wearing shorts: Ask yourself, 'Could I make a living modeling these shorts?' If the answer is no, then change your clothes. Put on a pair of pants.

People elect the President for reasons that have nothing to do with his ability to be president.

While clothes with pictures and/or writing on them are not entirely an invention of the modern age, they are an unpleasant indication of the general state of things. ... I mean, be realistic. If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?

Marriage entitles women to the protection of a strong man who will steady the stepladder while they paint the kitchen ceiling.

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.

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.

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.

They know you can't get people to stop smoking, so they develop a system of informants. That's the whole idea of second-hand smoke, you know. Make second-hand smoke dangerous and turn everybody against smokers. Then they say you can't even smoke in a bar - a bar! - because bartenders have a right to a smoke-free "workspace." Ah, bartenders, those health nuts.

Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.

There's nothing like being old to be sure of everything.

Even when America is not working that well, it still works better than other places.

If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?