Fran Lebowitz quotes:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Polite conversation is rarely either.

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

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

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

Humility is no substitute for a good personality.

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

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

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

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

How do you know if your child is a writer? Your obstetrician holds his stethoscope to your abdomen and only hears excuses.

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.

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

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

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.

That which we call civilization is merely the accumulated debris of a chilling number of bad nights.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

Food is definitely important part of your balanced diet.

I love being in love. I don't think anything compares with it, though I consider it very disruptive.

I'm sure that being sober all these years accounts for my ill humor.

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

One [New York] eatery is a remodeled diner that looks like what Busby Berkeley would have done if only he hadn't had the money.

To lose yourself in a book is the desire of the bookworm. I mean to be taken. That is my desire.

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

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

London: A place you go to get bronchitis.

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

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.

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

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

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

Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.

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

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

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.

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.

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

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

I never wanted to have any extra money, if it meant having to have any extra work.

for someone such as myself, who is kind of feckless and immature, it's better to have rich friends than to be rich yourself, because then you have wealth without the responsibility. You get to go to their houses, and you get acquainted with a level of furniture that you cannot provide for yourself. Furniture, I think is the most important attribute of rich people.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It's very important when making a friend to check and see if they have a private plane. People think a good personality trait in a friend is kindness or a sense of humor. No, in a friend a good personality trait is a Gulfstream.

Smoking is the great romance of my lifetime. If I could find someone I wanted forty-five times a day, perhaps I could stop.

Do not have your child's hair cut by a real hairdresser in a real hairdressing salon. He is, at this point, far too short to be exposed to contempt.

You're only as good as your last haircut.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one.

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.

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 ...

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.

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

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.

Los Angeles is a large city-like area surrounding the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens.

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

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

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

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.

Local television shows do not, in general, supply make-up artists. The exception to this is Los Angeles, an unusually generous city in this regard, since they also provide this service for radio appearances.

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.

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.

Knowingness is sexy. The opposite of sexy is naivete.

...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.

Children do not really need money. After all, they don't have to pay rent or send mailgrams.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

The main symptom of falling in love is that you lose your intellectual prowess.

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

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

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.

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.

If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies

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

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

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.

The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat.

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.

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.

Now, nature, as I am only too aware, has her enthusiasts, but on the whole, I am not to be counted among them. To put it 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.

There's no equivalent to Mozart in writing.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

My favorite animal is steak.

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.

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.

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.

Children are much less annoying [than adults] and they never start trends.