“… matter out of place, as a famous anthropologist once described dirt.” — Howard Jacobson Anthropologist Copy Share Image
“For matter out of place, as a famous anthropologist once described dirt.” — Howard Jacobson Anthropologist Copy Share Image
For my own poor part, I go to great lengths to keep my nostrils sightly. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
When I was teaching at Cambridge, I sold handbags on the market. — Howard Jacobson Cambridge Copy Share Image
There's no law that says you have to be consistent in your preferences. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
“So many unhappy women out there. Such a sea of female misery.” — Howard Jacobson Misery Copy Share Image
'J' is a novel. A story about what it is like for people after a terrible event. And it is a love… — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
'Family Guy'. It's not only the funniest programme on television, it's the most wonderfully, indecorously literate. — Howard Jacobson Family Copy Share Image
A novelist should make you realize nothing is stable. If you don't believe anything with robustness, you're doing something more radical than… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
“He would come to school balancing his night's dreams like an acrobat bearing a human pyramid on his shoulders.” — Howard Jacobson Dream Copy Share Image
I hear Shakespeare, sometimes, the way other people might hear God or Marx or something. But he's so different from that. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
You don't remember people you love by the wise things they say but the silly things they do. — Howard Jacobson Love Copy Share Image
Does anyone who leaves a Baltic country ever want to return to it? Someone must, I suppose. — Howard Jacobson Country Copy Share Image
If we declare ourselves, as readers, to be on the side of life, the question has to be asked what sort of… — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
Alone of prejudices, anti-Zionism is sacrosanct. How very dare we distinguish the motivation of one sort from another? Or question, in any… — Howard Jacobson Alone Copy Share Image
If we doubt the power of literature and art to civilise, how come no one has ever been mugged by a person… — Howard Jacobson Art Copy Share Image
Ideally, I would like everyone in the world to read and love my novels. In fact, I can't believe that everyone in… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I won't go so far as to say that novels sell in inverse proportion to their worth, for just occasionally, someone like… — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
When I first went to Israel, I saw soldiers pushing Palestinians around and thought, 'I can't stand this'. Then I'd meet somebody… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
That a nation's statuary will reflect beliefs and attitudes that are no longer current or congenial hardly needs arguing. In most instances,… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Certainly a curtain has never fallen too soon for me. Every play is too long, even the short ones. Every concert, every… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
For me a Writing Day was an occasion for self-reproach and panic, a time to lament the passing of the years, stare… — Howard Jacobson Age Copy Share Image
“to bar communication between intellectuals, who are always our best hope of peace, is particularly self-defeating and inane. It declares, inter alia,… — Howard Jacobson Communication Copy Share Image
It was reading Hamlet that ruined the concept of authenticity for me, not because Hamlet lacked existentialist credentials himself - indeed, as… — Howard Jacobson Authenticity Copy Share Image
“Hephzibah normally left the dishes until the next day. Piled up in the sink so that it was near impossible to fill… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
“He didn’t want to feel better. He owed it to what he’d been told to feel worse. That was what living a… — Howard Jacobson Art Copy Share Image
The novel is a thing of irony and ambiguity. That's at the heart of 'J', a world that has stopped arguing with… — Howard Jacobson Argument Copy Share Image
Although, from the point of view of sociology, the overt ambition of 'American Pastoral' - to imagine the impact on a good… — Howard Jacobson Ambition Copy Share Image
You can imprison but you can't enslave a man who argues with his books. — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
Whoever has once been truly unsettled by a work of the imagination will never give loyalty to a single idea, belief system,… — Howard Jacobson Belief Copy Share Image
Non-conformity has always been one of the great British virtues, and that includes non-conformity to things British. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I took the route favoured by all worldly failures and became a spiritual success. — Howard Jacobson Failure Copy Share Image
I wouldn't suppose for one moment that there's a single one of Trump's voters that would be anything but confirmed in their… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I am in denial about sport. I refuse to accept that I watch it. I am not the kind of man who… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Of the secular mysteries to which I wake with fresh and sometimes angry amazement every day, the queue is the second-most baffling.… — Howard Jacobson Angry Copy Share Image
One should take writers' valuations of their own work with a pinch of salt: they are likely to rank them differently tomorrow. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
To assert that antisemitism is unlike other racisms is not to claim a privilege for it. Hating a Jew is no worse… — Howard Jacobson Antisemitism Copy Share Image
