Fran Lebowitz Quotes

167 Sourced Quotes

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.

Fran Lebowitz
Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky.

Fran Lebowitz
To me the outdoors is what you must pass through in order to get from your apartment into a taxicab.

Fran Lebowitz
When I saw a phone on a plane for the first time, I panicked.... I thought people were going to call me.

Fran Lebowitz
Telling someone he looks healthy isn't a compliment — it's a second opinion.

Fran Lebowitz
I have always preferred the company of older people. No one in the history of the world has had less interest in the young than I do. I am not interested in what young people are thinking. They're thinking less than old people, of course. I mean, what could they be thinking? And what are they doing? They're doing the same stupid things you did.

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

Fran Lebowitz
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.

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

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
Most of my news, I get from the radio news stations. One of the stations' advertising lines is "Give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." In 22 minutes, they just have time for the headlines, so they can only really tell you what happened — which, by the way, is the news. They tell you how many people were killed in Iraq today, but they don't then bring on some Republican senator to explain to you how that's good. Or, on the contrary, they don't bring in a bunch of Democrats to tell you why it's bad. They just tell you what happened. That's the news. I am capable of analyzing my own news. What makes these people qualified to analyze my news for me? No matter what side they're on, I never agree with them.

Fran Lebowitz
There's no such thing as advice to the lovelorn. If they took advice, they wouldn't be lovelorn. You see, advice and lovelorn don't go together. Because advice makes love sound like some sort of cognitive activity, but we know that it isn't. We all know that it's some sort of horrible chemical reaction over which we have absolutely no control. And that's why advice doesn't work.

Fran Lebowitz
Writing pornography is deadly, nothing duller. I mean a toll-taker has a more exciting life than a pornographer.

Fran Lebowitz
It'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 Lebowitz
Breakfast cereals that come in the same colors as polyester leisure suits make oversleeping a virtue.

Fran Lebowitz
The only appropriate reply to the question 'Can I be frank?' is 'Yes, if I can be Barbara."

Fran Lebowitz
In New York it's not whether you win or lose — it's how you lay the blame.

Fran Lebowitz
My dream writing room would be the Imperial Library in Vienna.

Fran Lebowitz
Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

Fran Lebowitz
There is nothing more mine than my writing, nothing I'm more proprietary about.

Fran Lebowitz
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.

Fran Lebowitz
Never allow your child to call you by your first name. He hasn't known you long enough.

Fran Lebowitz
Those who use the word 'lifestyle' are rarely in possession of either.

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

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

Fran Lebowitz