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My Other Hobby, Because I Just Love Any Job With A Gavel, Is Auctioneer. And I So Often Have Presided Over Charity Auctions In New York That Many Years Ago Sotheby's Sent Me My Own Gavel. Now, The Sotheby's Gavel Is Infinitely More Elegant--it Came In A Little Velvet Bag, With "sotheby's" Inscribed In Gold. It Hangs In My Library. I Feel That Everyone Has Occasion To Use A Gavel At Various Times Everyday, They Just Don't Think Of It.

-Fran Lebowitz

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My Other Hobby, Because

Fran Lebowitz

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My Other Hobby, Because I Just Love Any Job With A Gavel, Is Auctioneer. And I So Often Have Presided Over Charity Auctions In New York That Many Years Ago Sotheby's Sent Me My Own Gavel. Now, The Sotheby's Gavel Is Infinitely More Elegant--it Came In A Little Velvet Bag, With "sotheby's" Inscribed In Gold. It Hangs In My Library. I Feel That Everyone Has Occasion To Use A Gavel At Various Times Everyday, They Just Don't Think Of It.

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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.

To Me The Biggest Waste Of Time Is Commuting. First, There Is No Place That Is Less Than A Two-hour Commute From New York. You Can Be Half A Mile Outside Of The City Limits; You're Two Hours Away By Car. I Don't Care How Close They Tell You It Is. "oh, It's Only Thirty Miles." Thirty Miles? At 8:30 In The Morning, Thirty Miles Outside New York, You Might As Well Be Starting Out In Omaha.

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.

Twenty-four-hour Room Service Generally Refers To The Length Of Time That It Takes For The Club Sandwich To Arrive. This Is Indeeddisheartening, Particularly When You've Ordered Scrambled Eggs.

The Good Thing About Being In Someone Else's Apartment Is It's So Much Easier To Leave Than It Is To Get Someone Out.

The Telephone Is A Good Way To Talk To People Without Having To Offer Them A Drink.

I Just Write When Fear Overtakes Me.

People Always Say "pop Culture." As If We Have Some High Culture To Distinguish It From.

Communists All Seem To Wear Small Caps, A Look I Consider Better Suited To Tubes Of Toothpaste Than To People.

Should Novels Generally Be 600 Pages? No, They Should Not. Half Of Writing, Maybe 3/4 Of Writing, Is Editing. This Seems To Be A Thing That Has Not Gotten Through To Them. It's My Impression That You Could Get Rid Of Half Of Most Of These Books. These People Are Not Good Enough To Be This Long, But They're Apparently Also Not Good Enough To Be Shorter.

There Were A Zillion Bad Jobs. That Doesn't Exist Any More. I Mean, I Could Wake Up One Afternoon With Zero Money And Know That By The End Of The Day, I Would Have Money.

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.

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.

[on Parenthood:] You Can't Change Your Mind--you Know, And Say, This Isn't Working Out, Let's Sell.

Writing Is So Hard. Why Would You Be A Writer If You Weren't Really Good At It? If You Could Be Anything Else, Why Would You Be A Writer?

Do Not Have Your Child's Hair Cut By A Real Hairdresser In A Real Hairdressing Salon. He Is, At This Point, Far Too Short To Be Exposed To Contempt.

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.

I Walk A Lot In New York, Not For The Exercise But To Get From Place To Place, And Because It's The Way Of Having The Least Contact With Human Beings.

White Grapes Are Very Attractive But When It Comes To Dessert People Generally Like Cake With Icing.

Do Not Approach With Anything Even Resembling Assurance A Restaurant That Moves.

I'm A Horrible Girlfriend. I Always Was. I'm Great At The Beginning, Because I Can Be Very Romantic.

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. The Rigors Of Learning How To Do Long Division Have Been A Traditional Part Of Childhood, Just Like Learning To Smoke. In Fact, As Far As I Am Concerned, The Two Go Hand In Hand. Any Child Who Cannot Do Long Division By Himself Does Not Deserve To Smoke.

I Hate Writing. I Will Do Anything To Avoid It. The Only Way I Could Write Less Was If I Was Dead.

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.

Abandon The Search For Truth; Settle For A Good Fantasy

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I'm Sure That Being Sober All These Years Accounts For My Ill Humor.

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I've Never Had The Experience Of Being Edited And Never Will.

Not Writing Is Probably The Most Exhausting Profession I've Ever Encountered.

If Your Sexual Fantasies Were Truly Of Interest To Others, They Would No Longer Be Fantasies.

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Do Not Elicit Your Child's Political Opinions. He Doesn't Know Any More Than You Do.

Political Opinions

I'm Such A Slow Writer I Have No Need For Anything As Fast As A Word Processor. I Don't Need Anything So Snappy. I Write So Slowly That I Could Write In My Own Blood Without Hurting Myself.

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Without These Tourists, New York Would Be Fantastic. I Don't Want Them To Come. Stay Home!

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I'm Like The Laziest Person Who Ever Lived. It's Amazing To Me I Even Sit Up.

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I Write So Slowly, I Could Write With My Own Blood And Not Hurt Myself.

London: A Place You Go To Get Bronchitis.

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Now People Need Special Costumes To Ride Bicycles. I Mean, A Helmet, What, Are You An Astronaut??

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My Dream Writing Room Would Be The Imperial Library In Vienna.

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Freedom Of Speech

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Life Is So Absurd Now That It Is Almost Impossible To Be A Satirist In This Era.

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Any Artist Who Has That Quality Of Timelessness Has That Quality Because They Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

Life Is Something To Do When You Can't Get To Sleep.

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I Wish That Real Estate Were Cheaper And Clothes Were More Expensive.

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When I Started Publishing, I Got Offers To Write For Big Magazines. But I Would Always Say, "well, It's Not That I Don't Want To Write For These Big Magazines, But You Can't Edit It."

In Rome People Spend Most Of Their Time Having Lunch. And They Do It Very Well - Rome Is Unquestionably The Lunch Capital Of The World.

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I Always Liked People Who Are Older. Of Course, Every Year It Gets Harder To Find Them.

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Inhabitants Of Underdeveloped Nations And Victims Of Natural Disasters Are The Only People Who Have Ever Been Happy To See Soybeans.

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Rest Of Your Life

Things You Love

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Smoking Is The Great Romance Of My Lifetime. If I Could Find Someone I Wanted Forty-five Times A Day, Perhaps I Could Stop.

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There Are Too Many Books. The Books Are Terrible. And This Is Because You Have Been Taught To Have Self-esteem.

Success Didn't Spoil Me, I've Always Been Insufferable.

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Violet Will Be A Good Color For Hair At Just About The Same Time That Brunette Becomes A Good Color For Flowers.

Middle Class Was Defined By Having Certain Values And Only A Certain Amount Of Money. But This New Middle Class Seems To Have Absolutely No Values And An Unlimited Amount Of Money.

The Effect Of Aids Was Like A War In A Minute Country. Like, In World War I, A Whole Generation Of Englishmen Died All At Once. And With Aids, A Whole Generation Of Gay Men Died Practically All At Once, Within A Couple Of Years.

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Being Poor Is Like Being A Child. Being Rich Is Like Being An Adult: You Get To Do Whatever You Want. Everyone Is Nice When They Have To Be; Rich People Are Nice When They Feel Like It.

When I Saw A Phone On A Plane For The First Time, I Panicked ... I Thought People Were Going To Call Me.

All God's Children Are Not Beautiful. Most Of God's Children Are, In Fact, Barely Presentable.

Original Thought Is Like Original Sin: Both Happened Before You Were Born To People You Could Not Have Possibly Met.

Original Thought

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I Had To Go On Tv With The President Of The Catholic League, Which Is Not An Official Organization At All, Just A Lot Of Catholics, Or Maybe It's Just This Guy. He Demanded To De-fund Art Completely And Argued That Taxpayers Should Not Pay For It. I Said People Who Represent The Catholic Church Shouldn't Talk About Taxes.

Having Been Unpopular In High School Is Not Just Cause For Book Publications.

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.

If You're Going To America, Bring Your Own Food.

There's Nothing Like Being Old To Be Sure Of Everything.

I Am Not Personally A Parent. But I Do Have Two Godchildren And Am Expecting A Third. I Am Naturally Concerned For Their Future. If I Ruled The World You Could Bet Your Boots That None Of Them Would Ever Set Their Eyes On Any Such Contraptions As Digital Clocks And Pocket Calculators. But Alas, I Do Not Rule The World And That, I Am Afraid, Is The Story Of My Life - Always A Godmother, Never A God.

I'd Like To Decide Who Comes Here. I'd Like To Be The Admissions Director Of New York.

The Truth Is That Most Families Have No Smart Ones And No Pretty Ones. Most Families Are A Bunch Of Unattractive Dopes. And It Turns Out That The Bush Family, Like Most Families, Has No Smart Ones. I Was Not Surprised To See This.

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.

Donald Trump Is Not My Fault. You Can Blame Certain Things On Me, But Not Donald Trump.

You Don't Have To Lay An Egg To Know If It Tastes Good.

I Hate, Simply, To Work. I Just Hate To Work, Period. I Am Profoundly Slothful. Practically Inert.

Great People Talk About Ideas, Average People Talk About Things, And Small People Talk About Wine.

Sleep Is Death Without The Responsibility.

Those Who Use The Word 'lifestyle' Are Rarely In Possession Of Either.

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.".

What's So Great Thing About Clothes Is That They're Artificial - You Can Lie, You Can Choose The Way You Look, Which Is Not True Of Natural Beauty. So If You're Naturally Beautiful, Wear What You Want, But That's 01% Of People. Most People Just Aren't Good Looking Enough To Wear What They Have On. They Should Change. They Should Get Some Slacks And A Nice Overcoat. Remember When The Style Was Incredibly Messy Hair? That's Great If You're A Model. But If You're Not A Model, You Would Look Better If You Washed Your Hair, Because You Are Not Beautiful.

Polite Conversation Is Rarely Either.

There's No Such Thing As Advice To The Lovelorn. If They Took Advice, They Wouldn't Be Lovelorn.

Democracy Is An Interesting, Even Laudable, Notion And There Is No Question But That When Compared To Communism, Which Is Too Dull, Or Fascism, Which Is Too Exciting, It Emerges As The Most Palatable Form Of Government.

Magazines All Too Frequently Lead To Books And Should Be Regarded By The Prudent As The Heavy Petting Of Literature.

The Most Common Error Made In Matters Of Appearance Is The Belief That One Should Disdain The Superficial And Let The True Beauty Of One's Soul Shine Through. If There Are Places On Your Body Where This Is A Possibility, You Are Not Attractive - You Are Leaking.

Why Not Have Your First Baby At Sixty, When Your Husband Is Already Dead And Your Career Is Over? Then You Can Really Devote Yourself To It.

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