Fran Lebowitz Quotations

You're only as good as your last haircut.

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior.

Humility is no substitute for a good personality.

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.

Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.

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.

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.

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.

Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.

The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail.

Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step - it is an old business procedure.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.

Success didn't spoil me, I've always been insufferable.

To put it rather bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.

I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.

I never met anyone who didn't have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?

Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.

In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

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.

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

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.

The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.

Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky.

Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.

Children are the most desirable opponents at scrabble as they are both easy to beat and fun to cheat.

If you're going to America, bring your own food.

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.

Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.

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.

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.

Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications.

Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you.

Calling a taxi in Texas is like calling a rabbi in Iraq.

If you are truly serious abut preparing your child for the future, don't teach him to subtract teach him to deduct.

Designer clothes worn by children are like snowsuits worn by adults. Few can carry it off successfully.

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.

Never relinquish clothing to a hotel valet without first specifically telling him that you want it back.

Don't bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add.

Scientists - the crowd that for dash and style make the general public look like the Bloomsbury set.

When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.

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.

Having been unpopular in high school is not a just cause for book publication

. . .to me the outdoors is what you have to pass through in order to get from your apartment into a taxicab.

Do not allow children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth.

Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in moods, children will persist in discussing the color of a recently sighted cement mixer long after one's interest in the topic has waned

I often used to say, the more parties there were for a book, the worse the book was.

Whenever someone accuses someone of being a racist - which is rare, you have to admit, considering how much racism there is - there is an incredible outrage. I realized that we live in an environment that it seems to be worse to call someone a racist than to be one.

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?"

I used to rent a house in Princeton, New Jersey, and whenever people came to visit me, I would drive them past Albert Einstein's house, which is the most ordinary house in Princeton - a house, let me assure you, that now a salesman wouldn't live in. I'd always say, "That was Albert Einstein's house." And they'd say, "What do you mean? Why would Albert Einstein live in a little house like that?" And I'd always say to people, "Because he didn't care!"

Perhaps the least cheering statement ever made on the subject of art is that life imitates it.

Communists all seem to wear small caps, a look I consider better suited to tubes of toothpaste than to people.

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.

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.

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.

If you want to get ahead in this world get a lawyer -- not a book.

There's too much democracy in the culture, not enough in the society.

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.

Writers have problems writing sex scenes, because writing one really well is pornography.

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?

...I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey.

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.

I just write when fear overtakes me.

Even if people aren't Republicans, it doesn't seem shocking to them that Ronald Reagan was the president. Well of course, because Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor! This is not only a bar too low, this is no bar at all. I don't care who you are, you know 20 people smarter than Ronald Reagan. You know 20 people who would be a better president than Ronald Reagan.

Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I've ever encountered. It takes it out of you. It's very psychically wearing not to write - I mean if you're supposed to be writing.

I have always preferred the company of older people. No one in the history of the world has had less interest in the young than I do. I am not interested in what young people are thinking. They're thinking less than old people, of course. I mean, what could they be thinking? And what are they doing? They're doing the same stupid things you did.

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

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.

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

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.

Smoking is, as far as I am concerned, the entire point of being an adult. Many people find smoking objectionable. I myself find many - even more - things objectionable. I do not like aftershave lotion, adults who roller-skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. I do not, however, go around enacting legislation and putting up signs.

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.

Writing pornography is deadly, nothing duller. I mean a toll-taker has a more exciting life than a pornographer.

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.

The first step in having any successful war is getting people to fight it.

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.

[On parenthood:] You can't change your mind--you know, and say, this isn't working out, let's sell.

We live in a culture where everyone is perfectly willing to do this [to make a lot of money], and they're just looking for the opportunity. Obviously, a person who is really dumb is not gonna make a zillion dollars. But for a person who is really smart, really smart, it's a boring pursuit. It's not endlessly fascinating.

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.

Frenchman: Germans with good food.

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.

Nothing lasts. So it's my belief, yes, I know a lot of the things that we liked didn't last, but maybe things we don't like, they're also not going to last. There has been progress in my lifetime. There are certainly things that are better than when I was young, and there are things that are worse. New York City, it's worse. There's no question.

It is, in fact, safe to assume that, more often than not, life imitates craft, for who among us can say that our experience does not more closely resemble a macramé plant holder than it does a painting by Seurat. When it comes to art, life is the biggest copycat in the matter of the frame.

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

Writers get exactly the right amount of fame: just enough to get a good table in a restaurant but not enough so that people are constantly interrupting you while you're eating dinner.

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.

When I saw a phone on a plane for the first time, I panicked ... I thought people were going to call me.

Your responsibility as a parent is never great as the case is with the mother.

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

New York was always more expensive than the other places, even when it was going bankrupt. In other words, in 1971, New York was expensive for someone with no money. For anyone.

Smoking is, if not my life, then at least my hobby. I love to smoke. Smoking is fun. Smoking is cool. Smoking is, as far as I am concerned, the entire point of being an adult. It makes growing up genuinely worthwhile. I am quite well aware of the hazards of smoking. Smoking is not a healthful pastime, it is true. Smoking is indeed no bracing dip in the ocean, no strenuous series of calisthenics, no two laps around the reservoir. On the other hand, smoking has to its advantage the fact that is a quiet pursuit. Smoking is, in effect a dignified sport.