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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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Fran Lebowitz
Age: 73
Born: 1950
Born: October 27
Author
Humorist
Journalist
Orator
Writer
Morristown
NJ
Frances Ann Lebowitz
Robert Paine Cook
Think
Write
Writers
Thinking
Problem
Thousand
Condense
Anything
Almost
Kidding
Feel
Five
Paragraph
Feels
Ability
Exact
Writing
Words
Opposite
Much
Natural
Opposites
Make
Often
Gonna

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You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.
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If you're going to America, bring your own food.
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I'm a horrible girlfriend. I always was. I'm great at the beginning, because I can be very romantic.
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I don't like to read nonfiction. To me, fact is something I can look up.
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I just write when fear overtakes me.
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Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.
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The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.
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The Italians are the most civilized people. And they're very warm. Basically, they're Jews with great architecture.
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If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies.
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I never had a typewriter. I never had any machines.
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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.
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Money...buys privacy, silence. The less money you have, the noisier it is the thinner your walls, the closer your neighbors.... The first thing you notice when you step into the house or apartment of a rich person is how quiet it is.
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Writing pornography is deadly, nothing duller. I mean a toll-taker has a more exciting life than a pornographer.
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Any artist who has that quality of timelessness has that quality because they tell the truth.
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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.
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Being offended is a natural consequence of leaving the house.
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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.
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I stopped taking drugs when I was 19, and who wants to drive a cab around New York with drugs in their car?
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I drank my lifetime supply of alcohol and I took my lifetime supply of drugs between the ages of 15 and 19.
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It's much easier to write a solemn book than a funny book. It's harder to make people laugh than it is to make them cry. People are always on the verge of tears.
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