Fran Lebowitz Quotes

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.

We live in a culture where everyone is perfectly willing to do this [to make a lot of money], and they're just looking for the opportunity. Obviously, a person who is really dumb is not gonna make a zillion dollars. But for a person who is really smart, really smart, it's a boring pursuit. It's not endlessly fascinating.

Forcing people into a situation where they're supposed to adore each other is probably bad. But letting people get on and off the 6 train without stabbing each other, that's good.

All of television's appalling, but this is hardly a new statement.

You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness.

When I was a kid, the people of my generation didn't want to be writers, they wanted to be rock stars. Rock and roll was not just entertainment, it was the center of people's lives. When I was young, it was exciting and interesting.

I, unfortunately, take the subway a lot. It's not my preference, but it is my lot in life.

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.

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."

Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy

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.

Marriage entitles women to the protection of a strong man who will steady the stepladder while they paint the kitchen ceiling.

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.

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.

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.

If you don't have children and you don't have a job, you have time for friendship ... People who have jobs are not the best friends to have. It's better to be friends with people who are unemployed.

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior.

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

Commercials and sometimes other guests - it's the down side of TV. Other people - it's the downside of life in general.

The downfall of most diets is that they restrict your intake of food.

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

there are two kinds of music - good music and bad music. Good music is music that I want to hear. Bad music is music that I don't want to hear.

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

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

If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies.

Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step - it is an old business procedure.

If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would pretty much be left with Let's Make a Deal.

those who use the word 'lifestyle' are rarely in possession of either.

They know you can't get people to stop smoking, so they develop a system of informants. That's the whole idea of second-hand smoke, you know. Make second-hand smoke dangerous and turn everybody against smokers. Then they say you can't even smoke in a bar - a bar! - because bartenders have a right to a smoke-free "workspace." Ah, bartenders, those health nuts.

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

Writers have problems writing sex scenes, because writing one really well is pornography.

I am alternately very gregarious - very sociable - and then very solitary.

Don't bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add.

Scientists - the crowd that for dash and style make the general public look like the Bloomsbury set.

It's much easier to write a solemn book than a funny book. It's harder to make people laugh than it is to make them cry. People are always on the verge of tears.

Why not have your first baby at sixty, when your husband is already dead and your career is over? Then you can really devote yourself to it.

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.

I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.

In a print interview, as you may or may not know, they [editors] can do whatever they want. And they do. This is why most people are more hesitant to do print, because they can change it, and they do change it. They even change things that are in quotation marks, which is a pet peeve of mine. I've said to numerous reporters, "Would you read me back my direct quotes?" And they always say no. They always say that's against the policy.

Designer clothes worn by children are like snowsuits worn by adults. Few can carry it off successfully.

Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself - a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.

Take away a man's actual sense of manhood - which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children - and you've got to give them something else. And they did.

Screenwriting is not an artform, it is a punishment from God.

Presently it appears that people are mainly concerned with being well rested. Those capable of uninterrupted sleep are much admired. Unconsciousness is in great demand. This is the day of the milligram.

When we were young, we knew things. We knew basic history, even as it related to fashion. Now, when something reappears, an 18 year old has no clue that it's a revival. Despite the fact that they're almost always online they don't get references. I think that's part of why visual things are becoming so derivative.

For the movie review columns, I always knew exactly what I was going to write about - the movies.

modern science was largely conceived of as an answer to the servant problem and ... it is generally practiced by those who lack a flair for conversation.