Fran Lebowitz Quotes

When someone asks, 'Why do you think he's not calling me?' there's always one answer - 'He's not interested.' There's not ever any other answer.

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.

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

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

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.

I do not think everyone is created equal. In fact, I know they're not. [The Constitution] means that everyone should have the same laws as everyone else. It doesn't mean that everyone's as smart or as cute or as lucky as everyone else.

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

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.

[On not reading newspapers:] If something important happens, your mother calls you.

No one's supposed to be the president. This is not England. And it's not just the Bush family, all families designate each child as having some particular trait.

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. [...] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [...] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [...] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work.

I just can't smile at people for money.

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.

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

People care more about trends now than they do about style. They get so wrapped up in what's happening that they forget how to dress, and they never learn who they are because they never learn how to take care of anything.

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.

If I lived in another country, like a country that was, say, an enemy of the United States, I would be more amused than I am.

Your grandparents did not endure the indignities of a steerage journey to Ellis Island so that you could stand outside a discothèque and beg a wallpaper designer to take you in with him.

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

Until I was about 7, I thought books were just there, like trees. When I learned that people actually wrote them, I wanted to, too, because all children aspire to inhuman feats like flying. Most people grow up to realize they can't fly. Writers are people who don't grow up to realize they can't be God.

This idea that people have to love and understand each other is absurd. It's not human nature.

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

Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. Because it doesn't agitate against human nature.

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.

While it is undeniably true that people love a surprise, it is equally true that they are seldom pleased to suddenly and without warning happen upon a series of prunes in what they took to be a normal loin of pork.

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.

I had to go on TV with the president of the Catholic League, which is not an official organization at all, just a lot of Catholics, or maybe it's just this guy. He demanded to de-fund art completely and argued that taxpayers should not pay for it. I said people who represent the Catholic Church shouldn't talk about taxes.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

In New York we have zillions of different kinds of people, many of them hate each other, but violence based on that hatred is really uncommon here.

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

Civilised adults do not take apple juice with dinner.

I used to rent a house in Princeton, New Jersey, and whenever people came to visit me, I would drive them past Albert Einstein's house, which is the most ordinary house in Princeton - a house, let me assure you, that now a salesman wouldn't live in. I'd always say, "That was Albert Einstein's house." And they'd say, "What do you mean? Why would Albert Einstein live in a little house like that?" And I'd always say to people, "Because he didn't care!"

You sit or stand in the subway, and you look around - I do, because I don't have a phone so I'm not playing a game - and you see people.

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.

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

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

I believe in talking behind peoples' backs. That way, they hear it more than once.

By the time everyone catches up with you, you're bored.

I never would start writing before midnight and I would finish at, like, seven in the morning.

People elect the President for reasons that have nothing to do with his ability to be president.

I am not personally a parent. But I do have two godchildren and am expecting a third. I am naturally concerned for their future. If I ruled the world you could bet your boots that none of them would ever set their eyes on any such contraptions as digital clocks and pocket calculators. But alas, I do not rule the world and that, I am afraid, is the story of my life - always a godmother, never a God.

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

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.

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