The Fran Lebowitz Reader

by Fran Lebowitz

Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort.

All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.

Communists all seem to wear small caps, a look I consider better suited to tubes of toothpaste than to people.

Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky. One can only assume that this has something to do with not smoking enough.

Children respond inadequately to sardonic humor and veiled threats.

‘Well, if I break a nail and I have the broken piece they put it back on. But if I don’t they use someone else’s nail from the nail bank.’ ‘The nail bank?’ I repeated again. ‘Yes,’ she said and began to explain further, but I must confess that I was no longer listening, for I was far too intent on my own imaginings. I left the table in a daze and remember little of the hours that followed, since my mind was reeling with vivid nail bank visions.

Sexual congress with heavy machinery is not a special interest. It is a personality defect.

Wealth and power are much more likely to be the result of breeding than they are of reading.

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

Letting your child choose his own bedroom furniture is like letting your dog choose his own veterinarian.

Never, for effect, pull a gun on a small child. He won’t get it.

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.