Money...buys privacy, silence. The less money you have, the noisier it is; the thinner your walls, the closer your neighbors.... The first thing you notice when you step into the house or apartment of a rich person is how quiet it is.
Fran Lebowitzif 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.
Fran LebowitzWhen I saw a phone on a plane for the first time, I panicked ... I thought people were going to call me.
Fran LebowitzThe French probably invented the very notion of discretion. It's not that they feel that what you don't know won't hurt you; they feel that what you don't know won't hurt them. To the French lying is simply talking.
Fran LebowitzWriters 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.
Fran LebowitzThe only appropriate response to the question, 'Can I be frank?' is, 'Yes, if I can be Barbara.
Fran LebowitzOne of the big mistakes they made in Europe is that the circumstances in which you most frequently read or hear the word "race" or "racism" in Europe applies to Muslims. Which is not a race. It is a religion. You can convert to this. You cannot convert your race. I could become a Muslim. I could not become a Chinese person or a black person. So they constantly use that in Europe.
Fran LebowitzLife was certainly more entertaining when people were indulging their vices as opposed to going to meetings to indulge in a new vice: discussing their innermost thoughts in public.
Fran LebowitzViolet will be a good color for hair at just about the same time that brunette becomes a good color for flowers.
Fran LebowitzIt'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.
Fran LebowitzThe first people who died of AIDS were artists. They were the most interesting people.
Fran LebowitzOriginal thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
Fran LebowitzMost writers write too much. I have the exact opposite problem. I feel I could write almost anything in a paragraph. I have a natural ability to condense, and so I often think, "Are you kidding me? Five thousand words? How am I gonna make 5,000 words out of that?"
Fran LebowitzNew York was always more expensive than any other place in the United States, but you could live in New York - and by New York, I mean Manhattan. Brooklyn was the borough of grandparents. We didn't live well. We lived in these horrible places. But you could live in New York. And you didn't have to think about money every second.
Fran LebowitzChina is not a great idea: capitalism and a dictator. It's like the two worst possible things you could imagine together. It's a very bad idea.
Fran LebowitzA hobby is, of course, an abomination, as are all consuming interests and passions that do not lead directly to large, personal gain.
Fran LebowitzWhat people don't know is: Clothes don't really fit you unless they're made for you. Especially when you wear men's clothes, like I do. American women think that clothes fit them if they can fit into them. But that's not at all what fit means.
Fran LebowitzAll God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.
Fran LebowitzSmoking is the great romance of my lifetime. If I could find someone I wanted forty-five times a day, perhaps I could stop.
Fran LebowitzWhen it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.
Fran LebowitzPeople have been cooking and eating for thousands of years, so if you are the very first to have thought of adding fresh lime juice to scalloped potatoes try to understand that there must be a reason for this.
Fran LebowitzI always make a big effort to make a distinction between what is actually worse or what is just worse about not being 21. Of course, it's much worse not to be 21. This is a given. But there are things that are worse.
Fran LebowitzThe effect of AIDS was like a war in a minute country. Like, in World War I, a whole generation of Englishmen died all at once. And with AIDS, a whole generation of gay men died practically all at once, within a couple of years.
Fran LebowitzEducational 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.
Fran LebowitzEven 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.
Fran LebowitzWhen 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.
Fran LebowitzContrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks - chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write.
Fran LebowitzI have a double policy, which would also solve immigration: I would stand at the border of New York City and I would say, "You can come here to live, but you can't come here to visit."
Fran LebowitzTo me the biggest waste of time is commuting. First, there is no place that is less than a two-hour commute from New York. You can be half a mile outside of the city limits; you're two hours away by car. I don't care how close they tell you it is. "Oh, it's only thirty miles." Thirty miles? At 8:30 in the morning, thirty miles outside New York, you might as well be starting out in Omaha.
Fran LebowitzWithout these tourists, New York would be fantastic. I don't want them to come. Stay home!
Fran LebowitzIf you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail.
Fran Lebowitz