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I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

Fran Lebowitz

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Fran Lebowitz
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: October 27
Author
Humorist
Journalist
Orator
Writer
Morristown
NJ
Frances Ann Lebowitz
Robert Paine Cook
Afraid
Fear
Matter
Writing
Always
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Fran Lebowitz

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Writing pornography is deadly, nothing duller. I mean a toll-taker has a more exciting life than a pornographer.
Fran Lebowitz
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It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.
Fran Lebowitz
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I always make a big effort to make a distinction between what is actually worse or what is just worse about not being 21. Of course, it's much worse not to be 21. This is a given. But there are things that are worse.
Fran Lebowitz
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Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.
Fran Lebowitz
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People always say pop culture. As if we have some high culture to distinguish it from.
Fran Lebowitz
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Tourism as a number-one industry is a terrible, terrible idea for any city, especially New York. If you were going to turn a city, which is a place where people live, into a tourist attraction, you're going to have to make it a place that people who don't live here, like. So I object to living in a place for people who don't live here.
Fran Lebowitz
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Japanese food is very pretty and undoubtedly a suitable cuisine in Japan, which is largely populated by people of below average size. Hostesses hell-bent on serving such food to occidentals would be well advised to supplement it with something more substantial and to keep in mind that almost everybody likes french fries.
Fran Lebowitz
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The great thing about New Jersey is that it's close to New York.
Fran Lebowitz
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There's too much democracy in the culture, not enough in the society.
Fran Lebowitz
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I don't like the kind of country living where you have to help. I like country living where there is help.
Fran Lebowitz
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I'm very lazy, I hate to work.
Fran Lebowitz
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Most writers write too much. I have the exact opposite problem. I feel I could write almost anything in a paragraph. I have a natural ability to condense, and so I often think, Are you kidding me? Five thousand words? How am I gonna make 5,000 words out of that?
Fran Lebowitz
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It is, in fact, safe to assume that, more often than not, life imitates craft, for who among us can say that our experience does not more closely resemble a macramé plant holder than it does a painting by Seurat. When it comes to art, life is the biggest copycat in the matter of the frame.
Fran Lebowitz
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To me the outdoors is what you must pass through in order to get from your apartment into a taxicab.
Fran Lebowitz
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The Italians are the most civilized people. And they're very warm. Basically, they're Jews with great architecture.
Fran Lebowitz
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Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky.
Fran Lebowitz
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[On not reading newspapers:] If something important happens, your mother calls you.
Fran Lebowitz
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When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree.
Fran Lebowitz
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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
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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?
Fran Lebowitz