Fran Lebowitz Quotes - Page 15

To lose yourself in a book is the desire of the bookworm. I mean to be taken. That is my desire.

Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one.

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

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

[On parenthood:] You can't change your mind--you know, and say, this isn't working out, let's sell.

No one's supposed to be the president. This is not England. And it's not just the Bush family, all families designate each child as having some particular trait.

Smoking is, as far as I'm concerned, the entire point of being an adult.

New York's not exactly antiseptic. It could be clean and less dangerous, and not horrible, not under a tidal wave of tourists.

[On the writers she admires:] I prefer dead writers, because I don't see them at parties.

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.

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.

Smoking is, as far as I am concerned, the entire point of being an adult. Many people find smoking objectionable. I myself find many - even more - things objectionable. I do not like aftershave lotion, adults who roller-skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. I do not, however, go around enacting legislation and putting up signs.

The great thing about New Jersey is that it's close to New York.

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.

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

London: A place you go to get bronchitis.

Should you be a teenager blessed with uncommon good looks, document this state of affairs by the taking of photographs. It is the only way anyone will ever believe you in years to come.

A person who actually knows how to wear clothes...they would look good in any clothes. You see this especially at the Academy Awards. Even if the dresses are beautiful and expensive and important, the actresses can't always carry them. Sometimes I feel like saying to them, "Act! You know how to act, you're an actor. You're about to win an award for, I don't know, convincingly playing that Venezuelan nun who went to war. Now act like you can wear this dress.".

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.

New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from.

Because of the Internet everybody sees the same stuff. You can buy the clothes of New York, even if you're not living there. So I think that the accessibility, in this case, drives buying choices more than anything else.

I love being in love. I don't think anything compares with it, though I consider it very disruptive.

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.

What people don't know is: Clothes don't really fit you unless they're made for you. Especially when you wear men's clothes, like I do. American women think that clothes fit them if they can fit into them. But that's not at all what fit means.

I wish that real estate were cheaper and clothes were more expensive.