"Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try."
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Quote collection
Fran Lebowitz quotes (page 2 of 20)
389 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting."
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"While clothes with pictures and/or writing on them are not entirely an invention of the modern age, they are an unpleasant indication of the general state of things. ... I mean, be realistic. If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?"
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"If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail."
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"What do they do in these [private] clubs, anyway? Sit around saying things like 'Thank God I'm here. No Jews! What fun! This is living, huh? Look! No Jews! I don't know when I've had a better time. And no women! Just men! And no blacks! Just whites! White men! White men who are not Jewish! It doesn't get any better than this.' To some people, apparently, this is a perfect description of injustice. To me, this is a perfect description of a gay bar in Iceland."
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"Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don't are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn't put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a Lesbian."
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"Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step - it is an old business procedure."
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"You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness."
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"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."
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"Food is an important part of a balanced diet."
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"I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté."
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"The downfall of most diets is that they restrict your intake of food."
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"My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly 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."
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"In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy."
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"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky."
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"I believe in talking behind peoples' backs. That way, they hear it more than once."
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"Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs."
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"There's also the idea in this country [USA], it's not wholly new, but it's new in its kind of purity, in that you have to be really smart to be really rich. I always say to people, the reason people believe this is a) they've never met a really smart person, and b) they've never met a really rich person. I have met both, and I cannot see the crossover. You do not have to be a genius to get rich. You have to be ruthless to get rich."
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"Being offended is a natural consequence of leaving the house."
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"There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior."
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