Quotes from lebowitz fran iii

I write a sentence a thousand times, changing it all the time to look at it in different ways.

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. When my mother explained it, I kept after her: What are you saying? What do you mean? I couldn't believe it. It was astonishing. It was like--here's the man who makes all the trees. Then I wanted to be a writer, because, I suppose, it seemed the closest thing to being God.

When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.

I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don't register that impulse. It's like the impulse for wanting a dog.

I doubt there's ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not.

I believe in talent. I know you're not supposed to believe in that anymore because you're supposed to believe if you just work hard you can do anything. That's how you succeed, maybe. But talent is something you're born with. You cannot acquire it by working hard, and you cannot lose it by lying around either.

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.

In a print interview, as you may or may not know, they can do whatever they want. And they do. This is why most people are more hesitant to do print, because they can change it, and they do change it. They even change things that are in quotation marks, which is a pet peeve of mine.

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.

I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake.

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.