Fran Lebowitz

“Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“There's no equivalent to Mozart in writing.”

“People have been cooking and eating for thousands of years, so if you are the very first to have thought of adding lime juice to scalloped potatoes try to understand there must be a reason for this.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.”