FRAN LEBOWITZ QUOTES II
American author (1950- )
I have a real aversion to machines. I write with a pen. Then I read it to someone who writes it onto the computer. What are those computer letters made of anyway? Light? Too insubstantial. Paper, you can feel it. A pen. There's a connection. A pen goes exactly at your speed, whereas that machine jumps. And then, that machine is waiting for you, just humming "uh-huh, yes?"
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
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
interview, Ruminator Magazine, August/September 2005
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.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Social Studies
You're only as good as your last haircut.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
attributed, Say It With Style
The second I learned to read in first grade, when I was 5, I preferred it to life. And I still do.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014
My other hobby, because I just love any job with a gavel, is auctioneer. And I so often have presided over charity auctions in New York that many years ago Sotheby's sent me my own gavel. Now, the Sotheby's gavel is infinitely more elegant--it came in a little velvet bag, with "Sotheby's" inscribed in gold. It hangs in my library. I feel that everyone has occasion to use a gavel at various times everyday, they just don't think of it.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
interview, Ruminator Magazine, August/September 2005
[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.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
There are some great writers who are great talkers, but there are more great writers who are not great talkers. People seem to think there is some connection between talking and writing, but I love to talk and if there were some connection between the two of them I would be the most prolific writer in the history of the world.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Metropolitan Life
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
interview, Index Magazine
The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
attributed, The Art of Talking to Anyone
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
interview, Index Magazine, 1997
Think before you speak. Read before you think.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Fran Lebowitz Reader
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.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
interview, Ruminator Magazine, August/September 2005
I think humor is warmer, and wit is colder. Wit is judgment, whereas humor invites some sort of response.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014
Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Social Studies
We are all born with a rut radar. Mine is finely wired, a little oversensitive maybe. Perhaps just a bit hyperactive. Twenty steady boyfriends before turning 16, a new best friend 12 times a year, switched college majors every time I met someone who seemed exactly like the sort of person I really, really wanted to be. I'm not fickle. I'm just never there yet.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Tales From A Broad: An Unreliable Memoir
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
"Words Are Easy, Books Are Not", New York Times, August 10, 1994
If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Metropolitan Life
Andy Warhol made fame more famous.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
attributed, Hollywood Nation