Top 300 Fran Lebowitz Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “There are certain relationships I think I’m great at: I’m the world’s greatest daughter. I’m a great relative. I believe I’m a great friend.”

— Fran Lebowitz

202. “I just can’t smile at people for money.”

— Fran Lebowitz

203. “I am alternately very gregarious – very sociable – and then very solitary.”

— Fran Lebowitz

204. “Contrary 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 Lebowitz

205. “The first step in having any successful war is getting people to fight it.”

— Fran Lebowitz

206. “I don’t like the kind of country living where you have to help. I like country living where there is help.”

— Fran Lebowitz

207. “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.”

— Fran Lebowitz

208. “In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection. But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word. When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm.”

— Fran Lebowitz

209. “The great thing about New Jersey is that it’s close to New York.”

— Fran Lebowitz

210. “I believe that at birth everyone gets the capacity for a certain amount of drugs and alcohol, everyone the same, you can do it all between 15 and 19 like I did, or you can stretch it out over 70 years.”

— Fran Lebowitz

211. “A community is a butcher and a doctor, a minister, a town troublemaker. A “community” is not a bunch of people united by some grievance. That’s just self-righteousness – incredibly dangerous and antidemocratic.”

— Fran Lebowitz

212. “White grapes are very attractive but when it comes to dessert people generally like cake with icing.”

— Fran Lebowitz

213. “Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons?”

— Fran Lebowitz

214. “Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.”

— Fran Lebowitz

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

— Fran Lebowitz

216. “Without these tourists, New York would be fantastic. I don’t want them to come. Stay home!”

— Fran Lebowitz

217. “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.”

— Fran Lebowitz

218. “Women who insist upon having the same options as men would do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent type.”

— Fran Lebowitz

219. “I’m not a nervous person. I’m not afraid to be on TV. I’m only afraid when I write. When I’m at my desk I feel like most people would feel if they went on TV.”

— Fran Lebowitz

220. “Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications.”

— Fran Lebowitz

221. “I, unfortunately, take the subway a lot. It’s not my preference, but it is my lot in life.”

— Fran Lebowitz

222. “Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast, the disk jockey is not allowed to talk.”

— Fran Lebowitz

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

— Fran Lebowitz

224. “Scientists – the crowd that for dash and style make the general public look like the Bloomsbury set.”

— Fran Lebowitz

225. “I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it’s not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person.”

— Fran Lebowitz

226. “I’ve always been old at heart.”

— Fran Lebowitz

227. “Cold soup is a very tricky thing and it is a rare hostess who can carry it off. More often than not the dinner guest is left with the impression that had he only come a little earlier he could have gotten it while it was still hot.”

— Fran Lebowitz

228. “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.”

— Fran Lebowitz

229. “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

230. “Children do not really need money. After all, they don’t have to pay rent or send mailgrams.”

— Fran Lebowitz

231. “The main symptom of falling in love is that you lose your intellectual prowess.”

— Fran Lebowitz

232. “I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use.”

— Fran Lebowitz

233. “I don’t like to read nonfiction. To me, fact is something I can look up.”

— Fran Lebowitz

234. “I could not possibly be in a relationship now for more than six days. When I was younger, I might have said six months, although I think the longest relationship I was ever in was three years.”

— Fran Lebowitz

235. “Things that people will say to me, mostly, is that you shouldn’t have all these books. It’s too expensive.”

— Fran Lebowitz

236. “Frenchman: Germans with good food.”

— Fran Lebowitz

237. “Even when America is not working that well, it still works better than other places. F.”

— Fran Lebowitz

238. “The thing you love right away, don’t do it, because that’s the very thing that’s going to be your addiction for the rest of your life.”

— Fran Lebowitz

239. “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.”

— Fran Lebowitz

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

— Fran Lebowitz

241. “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.”

— Fran Lebowitz

242. “There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air.”

— Fran Lebowitz

243. “Educational 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 Lebowitz

244. “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.”

— Fran Lebowitz

245. “Once you go outside your natural audience, there are tons of people that don’t like you.”

— Fran Lebowitz

246. “If there were, say, only 10 percent of the hotels that exist now, there would be all these apartments for people who live in New York, as opposed to people visiting New York. And then all this junk in the theater, we would no longer need the kind of stuff that tourists like.”

— Fran Lebowitz

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

— Fran Lebowitz

248. “Because I was young, I had this long hair, and people used to try to tip me with joints.”

— Fran Lebowitz

249. “Breakfast cereals that come in the same colors as polyester leisure suits make oversleeping a virtue.”

— Fran Lebowitz

250. “People who are well-known, famous people, I think, make very poor characters for fiction. They make good characters for gossip columns. But not for fiction.”

— Fran Lebowitz