Fran Lebowitz Quotes

You can’t really yell at your boyfriend for stealing your seat and your best friend. You also can’t yell at your best friend for stealing your boyfriend. Or you can…but Hi seemed like a much easier way to start the morning.

It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.

I was pretty dorky, but there are tiers of dorkdom and I always had friends, though they were equally dorky. I was one of those kids who contracted cooties in the second grade and then had cooties, because there wasn't a vaccine for it. When I was around people, though, I generally wanted to make them laugh. I told a lot of stories.

In relationships, you learn a million things. I'm sure a therapist can tell you about it.

Everybody has friends they dislike; people who they have slipped into relationships with, people they would not have chosen had they been more cautious, more circumspect.

It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live than to be loved by them; and this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.

I play around with human things, human relationships and that, and allow that kind of talk to work in that way, on that level.

I have a lot of problems understanding connections between people and how to negotiate that. It makes everything hard offstage.

It is not expedient or wise to examine our friends too closely; few persons are raised in our esteem by a close examination.

After a universal silence, Leo was the first to speak. “Did anyone else notice—” “Yes,” Catherine said. “What do you make of it?” “I haven’t decided yet.” Leo frowned and took a sip of port. “He’s not someone I would pair Bea with.” “Whom would you pair her with?” “Hanged if I know,” Leo said. “Someone with similar interests. The local veterinarian, perhaps?” “He’s eighty-three years old and deaf,” Catherine said. “They would never argue,” Leo pointed out.

Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them.

But many, many stories were told; from what could be gathered, all fifty of the mine's inhabitants had reacted on each other, two by two, as in combinatorial analysis, that is to say, everyone with all the others, and especially every man with all the women, old maids or married, and every woman with all the men. All I had to do was to select two names at random, better if different sex, and ask a third person, "What happened with those two?" and lo and behold, a splendid story was unfolded for me, since everyone knew the story of everyone else.

People on dates shouldn't even be allowed out in public.

People who laugh so heartily at what they themselves have said, when it is not funny, dispense us accordingly, by taking upon themselves the responsibility for the mirth, from joining in it.

In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.

We are not evil, inadequate or incompetent when our relationships fail.

If in addition to being physically unattractive you find that you do not get along well with others, do not under any circumstances attempt to alleviate this situation by developing an interesting personality. An interesting personality, is, in an adult, insufferable. In a teenager it is frequently punishable by law.

In all relationships, regardless of their nature, there comes that moment when you understand that there are some things you will never understand. When you are standing in that moment, just be right with it.

I look at people holdings hands in the hallways, and I try to think how it all works. At the school dances, I sit in the background, and I tap my toe, and I wonder how many couples will dance to ‘their song.’ In the hallways, I see the girls wearing the guys’ jackets, and I think about the idea of property. And I wonder if anyone is really happy.

Are you two having some sort of strange human thing that you can’t follow what I’m saying? (Simi)

Friendship is something that gets harder to understand, every damn year of my life.Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes. In my worst moods, I think the best you can say is that a friend is anyone you don't despise.

The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another.

Guys have guy/girl relationships so that they can have their own guy thing plus the sensitive thing with the girl.

I was always the squarest person in the cool room, and alternatively, sometimes the weirder person at the mainstream table.