Fran Lebowitz Quotes

Being poor is like being a child. Being rich is like being an adult: you get to do whatever you want. Everyone is nice when they have to be; rich people are nice when they feel like it.

A dog who thinks he is a man's best friend is a dog who obviously has never met a tax lawyer.

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

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.

Nothing succeeds like address.

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

Food is definitely important part of your balanced diet.

Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut??

I'm like the laziest person who ever lived. It's amazing to me I even sit up.

New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from.

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

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 have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. I don't want to brag, but I'm the laziest person I have ever known.

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

[On the writers she admires:] I prefer dead writers, because I don't see them at parties.

Randomness scares people. Religion is a way to explain randomness.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I drove a cab. But all the girls I knew when I was young who had to work - there were rich girls - but the ones who had to work were waitresses. Because you could always get shifts in a restaurant.

Once you go outside your natural audience, there are tons of people that don't like you.

When Toni Morrison said 'write the book you want to read,' she didn't mean everybody.

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.

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

I hate all jobs. I've never had a job I liked.

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.

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

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

When I fly, I'm never afraid the plane is going to crash. But there have often been times when I was afraid it wouldn't crash. I was just afraid it was going to circle O'Hare for the rest of my life.

When I was young, I liked romance. But to me, romance is the opposite of domestic life. I just don't want anyone in the apartment, not for longer than a few hours.

The good thing about being in someone else's apartment is it's so much easier to leave than it is to get someone out.

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.

Will power is not telling anybody you quit smoking.

In Rome people spend most of their time having lunch. And they do it very well - Rome is unquestionably the lunch capital of the world.

Instead of writing it wrong six times and then writing it right, I think it wrong six times and then write it right the seventh time.

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

You should make it hard on yourself to write so you’re easier to read.

Knowingness is sexy. The opposite of sexy is naivete.

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

It's very important who the president of the United States is. America is a great idea, so that's why it's a great country.

I don't like the kind of country living where you have to help. I like country living where there is help.

I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person.

When I started publishing, I got offers to write for big magazines. But I would always say, "Well, it's not that I don't want to write for these big magazines, but you can't edit it."

I hate academic mysteries. As soon as I come across the word 'don' and it's not someone's first name, I close the book.

[Friendships] are easy to get out of compared to love affairs, but they are not easy to get out of compared to, say, jail.