Top 393 Quotes & Sayings by Fran Lebowitz - Page 3

A salad is not a meal, it is a style.

Spilling your guts is just exactly as charming as it sounds.

I prefer dead writers because you don't run into them at parties.

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.

Telling someone he looks healthy isn't a compliment -- it's a second opinion.

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.

Violet will be a good color for hair at just about the same time that brunette becomes a good color for flowers.

I, unfortunately, take the subway a lot. It's not my preference, but it is my lot in life.

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.

Japanese food is very pretty and undoubtedly a suitable cuisine in Japan, which is largely populated by people of below average size. Hostesses hell-bent on serving such food to occidentals would be well advised to supplement it with something more substantial and to keep in mind that almost everybody likes french fries.

There are two modes of transport in Los Angeles: car and ambulance. Visitors who wish to remain inconspicuous are advised to choose the latter

Take away a man's actual sense of manhood - which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children - and you've got to give them something else. And they did.

To me, the main difference between young people now and the people I was young with isn't so much style, it's the relationships they have with their parents. Their parents like them much more than ours liked us. Our parents weren't our friends. But now I see my friends on the phones with their, what, 30 - year - old kids? And they're talking about feelings.

If in addition to being physically unattractive you find that you do not get along well with others, do not under any circumstances attempt to alleviate this situation by developing an interesting personality. An interesting personality, is, in an adult, insufferable. In a teenager it is frequently punishable by law.

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.

There are too many books. The books are terrible. And this is because you have been taught to have self-esteem.

People have been cooking and eating for thousands of years, so if you are the very first to have thought of adding fresh lime juice to scalloped potatoes try to understand that there must be a reason for this.

[Children are] like talking animals. Their consciousness is so different from ours that they constitute a different species. They don't have to be particularly interesting children; just the fact that they are children is sufficient. They don't know what anything is, so they have to make it up. No matter how dull they are, they still have to figure things out for themselves.

Technological innovation has done great damage ... to eating habits. Food is now available in such unpleasant forms that one frequently finds smoking between courses to be an aid to digestion.

I hate, simply, to work. I just hate to work, period. I am profoundly slothful. Practically inert.

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.

Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I've ever encountered.

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.

While it is undeniably true that people love a surprise, it is equally true that they are seldom pleased to suddenly and without warning happen upon a series of prunes in what they took to be a normal loin of pork.

Sleep is death without the responsibility.

I do not believe in God. I believe in cashmere.

I'm a horrible girlfriend. I always was. I'm great at the beginning, because I can be very romantic.

American women think that clothes fit them if they can fit into them. But that's not at all what fit means.

The 3 questions of greatest concern are:, 1) Is it attractive?, 2) Is it amusing?, 3) Does it know its place?

remember this: no matter how politely or distinctly you ask a Parisian a question he will persist in answering you in French.

The Italians are the most civilized people. And they're very warm. Basically, they're Jews with great architecture.

Your grandparents did not endure the indignities of a steerage journey to Ellis Island so that you could stand outside a discothèque and beg a wallpaper designer to take you in with him.

Raisins are a thing that lasts, they come in small boxes, and you always feel like eating raisins, even at six in the morning. A raisin is always an appropriate snack.

Large, naked, raw carrots are acceptable as food only to those who live in hutches eagerly awaiting Easter.

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.

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.

I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use.

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.

Anti-smoking sentiment has replaced middle-class morality entirely. The smoker has taken the place of the homosexual. Today you hear people say things about smokers that used to be said about homosexuals - they pollute the environment; you don't want them around your children.

The first people who died of AIDS were artists. They were the most interesting people.

I am alternately very gregarious - very sociable - and then very solitary.

In fact, we live in a culture where intelligence, exceptional or not, is reviled.

Rome is a very loony city in every respect. One needs but spend an hour or two there to realize that Fellini makes documentaries.

The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking.

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.

Television turned out to be exactly as bad as the most irritating and pedantic intellectuals of the '50s said it was going to be.

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.

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.

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.

What's so great thing about clothes is that they're artificial - you can lie, you can choose the way you look, which is not true of natural beauty. So if you're naturally beautiful, wear what you want, but that's 01% of people. Most people just aren't good looking enough to wear what they have on. They should change. They should get some slacks and a nice overcoat. Remember when the style was incredibly messy hair? That's great if you're a model. But if you're not a model, you would look better if you washed your hair, because you are not beautiful.

People are constantly telling me, whether they are friends who feel sorry for me, because I can't find a place to live, or real estate agents, "You can't afford an apartment the size you need with this many books. Why don't you just put some of your books in storage?" And I always say the same thing: "What if I told you I had four children? Would you say, 'You just can't afford to house four children. Why don't you just put two of them in storage?'" That's how I feel.

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.

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.

What's the point of being young if you're not going to make new things, I wonder?

[On not reading newspapers:] If something important happens, your mother calls you.

If you can stay in love for more than two years, you're on something.

Albert Einstein didn't care where he lived. Albert Einstein was a genius. Albert Einstein wasn't getting lost in the master bedroom, he was lost in thought.

I'd like to decide who comes here. I'd like to be the admissions director of New York.

Everything in Japan is hidden. Real life has an unlisted phone number.

there are two kinds of music - good music and bad music. Good music is music that I want to hear. Bad music is music that I don't want to hear.