Fran Lebowitz Quotes

I have the exact opposite problem of every writer I've ever met: Every writer I've ever met writes things that are too long, and they have to edit them down.

The thing you love right away, don't do it, because that's the very thing that's going to be your addiction for the rest of your life.

There were a zillion bad jobs. That doesn't exist any more. I mean, I could wake up one afternoon with zero money and know that by the end of the day, I would have money.

I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

What I can't be is monogamous. That tends to upset people. I just don't like domestic life.

In New York, people are very overbooked.You say, When do you want to have dinner? It's May. They say, What about October? And then they complain: Oh you can't believe how booked up I am.

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 write a sentence a thousand times, changing it all the time to look at it in different ways.

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.

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.

There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air.

The Word Lady: Most Often Used to Describe Someone You Wouldn't Want to Talk to for Even Five Minutes.

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

Smoking is, as far as I'm concerned, the entire point of being an adult.

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

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.

Bread that must be sliced with an axe is bread that is too nourishing.

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

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

Cheese that is required by law to append the word food to its title does not go well with red wine or fruit.

Children are rarely in the position to lend one a truly interesting sum of money. There are, however, exceptions, and such children are an excellent addition to any party.

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

Any child who cannot do long division by himself does not deserve to smoke.

Never allow your child to call you by your first name. He hasn't known you long enough.

I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.

Never judge a cover by its book.

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

I'm not a nervous person. I'm not afraid to be on TV. I'm only afraid when I write. When I'm at my desk I feel like most people would feel if they went on TV.

I don't care if New York avoided bankruptcy by substituting tourism for the garment business.

New Yorkers, we've seen Donald Trump for, like, 30 years; we know who he is. So he wasn't a surprise to me.

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.

When I was young, boys didn't type.

Women who insist upon having the same options as men would do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent type

Do not approach with anything even resembling assurance a restaurant that moves.

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

Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.

To me, O'Hara is the real Fitzgerald.

If there had been a job of being a reader, I would have taken that, because I love to read and I don't love to write. That would be blissful.

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

There's no such thing as advice to the lovelorn. If they took advice, they wouldn't be lovelorn.

I've never seen the Kardashians; I'm not sure who they are. But I know a lot about them because it's impossible not to.

When people say, 'Doesn't Gloria [Vanderbilt] look great? She's 85.' I say, 'Yes, she was a raving beauty when she was 20,' that's the key. Very helpful.

I am not... totally unreceptive to colour providing it makes its appearance quietly, deferentially, and without undue fanfare.

I never had a typewriter. I never had any machines.

I'm very lazy, I hate to work.

Luckily when you drive a cab there are two things: You don't have a boss in the cab with you, and you are not facing the people that you are making money from.

No one I knew talked about money. It's not an area of interest.

I'm such a slow writer I have no need for anything as fast as a word processor. I don't need anything so snappy. I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.

The second I learned to read in first grade, when I was 5, I preferred it to life. And I still do.

I think humor is warmer, and wit is colder. Wit is judgment, whereas humor invites some sort of response.