Howard Jacobson Quotes

How do you explain to somebody who doesn't understand that you don't build a library to read. A library is a resource. Something you go to, for reference, as and when. But also something you simply look at, because it gives you succour, answers to some idea of who you are or, more to the point, who you would like to be, who you will be once you own every book you need to own.

How do you go on knowing that you will never again - not ever, ever - see the person you have loved? How do you survive a single hour, a single minute, a single second of that knowledge? How do you hold yourself together?

A novelist should make you realize nothing is stable. If you don't believe anything with robustness, you're doing something more radical than anything else.

The perfect bacon sandwich is on white bread, very soft and very thick. Sourdough with a good crust. The bacon is half way to being crispy - and there's lots of it - and enough brown sauce to trickle down your arm. You've not really enjoyed a bacon sandwich unless 10 minutes later you're still licking your wrists.

Although I was too young to understand the theory of universal (that's to say male) guilt, I was old enough to know which sex suffered migraine and which sex caused it.

I took the route favoured by all worldly failures and became a spiritual success.

I could use the company but I can't go through the pain of getting it.

The girls pick snouts from the pack as though they're chocolates and it matters which they select.

I'm a Jewish Jane Austen.

What it is to see, what liberties are taken when one looks, where looking leaves one vis-a-vis one's subject, or how far looking ultimately becomes one's subject - these are important questions.

Marriage is like a barbecue. When you light a barbecue, it's very exciting to see the flames. That's lovely, but you have to wait until the flames have died down. Everything that you want from a barbecue happens on the hot embers. You can't cook on those flames.

It's never over till it's over with a friend.

All those words of praise they use for novels - spare, economical. Why should I shell out £17 for economical?

In the matrimonial life of the Jewish male every day is Yom Kippur.