Fran Lebowitz Quotes

167 Sourced Quotes

Generally speaking, the poorer person summers where he winters.

Fran Lebowitz
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.

Fran Lebowitz
Rome is a very loony city in every respect. One needs but spend an hour or two there to realize that Fellini makes documentaries.

Fran Lebowitz
If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you've imagined. Venice is — Venice is better.

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

Fran Lebowitz
Your life story would not make a good book. Do not even try.

Fran Lebowitz
Do not elicit your child's political opinions. He doesn't know any more than you do.

Fran Lebowitz
Wealth and power are much more likely to be the result of breeding than they are of reading.
On self-help books

Fran Lebowitz
If in addition to being physically unattractive you find that you do not get along well with others, do not under any circumstances attempt to alleviate this situation by developing an interesting personality. An interesting personality, is, in an adult, insufferable. In a teenager it is frequently punishable by law.

Fran Lebowitz
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.

Fran Lebowitz
I like every single part of Italy, unlike Italians, who only like their part and hate all the rest. They say things like, 'You're going to... Rome?'

Fran Lebowitz
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death.

Fran Lebowitz
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.

Fran Lebowitz
Contrary to what many of you might 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 Lebowitz
Large, naked, raw carrots are acceptable as food only to those who live in hutches eagerly awaiting Easter.

Fran Lebowitz
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.

Fran Lebowitz
If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?
Of slogans on clothing

Fran Lebowitz
12.35 p.m.—The phone rings. I am not amused. This is not my favourite way to wake up. My favourite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper softly to me at two-thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish.

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

Fran Lebowitz
Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk.

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

Fran Lebowitz
It is not true that there is dignity in all work. Some jobs are definitely better than others.... People who have good jobs are happy, rich, and well dressed. People who have bad jobs are unhappy, poor and use meat extenders. Those who seek dignity in the type of work that compels them to help hamburgers are certain to be disappointed.

Fran Lebowitz
It is, in fact, safe to assume that, more often than not, life imitates craft, for who among us can say that our experience does not more closely resemble a macramé plant holder than it does a painting by Seurat. When it comes to art, life is the biggest copycat in the matter of the frame.

Fran Lebowitz
Science is not a pretty thing. It is unpleasantly proportioned, outlandishly attired and often over-eager. What then is the appeal of science? What accounts for its popularity? And who gives it its start?

Fran Lebowitz
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.

Fran Lebowitz
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.

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

Fran Lebowitz
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.

Fran Lebowitz
We are all born with a rut radar. Mine is finely wired, a little oversensitive maybe. Perhaps just a bit hyperactive. Twenty steady boyfriends before turning 16, a new best friend 12 times a year, switched college majors every time I met someone who seemed exactly like the sort of person I really, really wanted to be. I'm not fickle. I'm just never there yet.

Fran Lebowitz
Communism requires of its adherents that they arise early and participate in a strenuous round of calisthenics. To someone who wishes that cigarettes came already lit the thought of such exertion at an hour when decent people are just nodding off is thoroughly abhorrent.

Fran Lebowitz