If it's bathos you want - and I suspect we are all bathos junkies in the end - nothing gives it to… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
The more educated we are, the less we are prepared to tolerate views contrary to our own. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
The obligation to remember is inscribed on every Holocaust memorial, but even the words 'Never Forget' become irksome eventually. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
It's not only teenagers who think they look good in pre-holed jeans, and I doubt it's only the superannuated who are amused… — Howard Jacobson Doubt Copy Share Image
What isn't for everybody shouldn't be for anybody: the world's opera houses are the reasons we have cardboard cities. — Howard Jacobson Cardboard Copy Share Image
In my experience, every book you write changes the conditions in which you write the next. — Howard Jacobson Book Copy Share Image
If you had to say in one sentence what being Jewish means, it is being able to make fun of yourself Jewishly. — Howard Jacobson Being Copy Share Image
When demagogues and dictators ban art, this is the reason: art is the great solvent of obedient fundamentalism. — Howard Jacobson Art Copy Share Image
There was no question of ever sending us to Jewish schools... They wanted us out there. They wanted us to be lawyers… — Howard Jacobson Education Copy Share Image
Making America great again, as if to keep the world out. The world and all its fresh ideas and everything that's new… — Howard Jacobson America Copy Share Image
“I suspect you're thinking of Pascal,' Finkler said, finally.'Only he said the opposite. He said you might as well wager on God… — Howard Jacobson God Copy Share Image
I think one of the main reasons I write is to do better than ranting. The ranting is the opinion, and the… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
There is much that makes one pause in 'If This is a Man', the record of Levi's 11-month incarceration in Auschwitz, much… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I have never met an intelligent optimist. That is not to say I think pessimism makes you intelligent, but I have always… — Howard Jacobson Ancient greece Copy Share Image
It is no judgement of a thing outside yourself to say it makes you ill. The wise reader knows that every pronouncement… — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
I was brought up a Jew but, you know, that way of being Jewish - the New York way. We were stomach… — Howard Jacobson Day Copy Share Image
“T. S. Eliot told Auden tht the reason he played patience night after night was that it was the nearest thing to… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Do you want to be strangely various, or do you want to be purely yourself? Either way, revere no one. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I've always felt as much outside the Jewish experience as in it. It astonished my family that I wrote about things Jewish. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Imagine the anticlimax of opening a novel you'd just got Dostoyevsky to sign and finding 'Keep smiling - Fyodor.' — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
You can have your country and be pleased to welcome others to it. You can have your country and still enjoy living… — Howard Jacobson Country Copy Share Image
To my ear, the term 'comic novelist' is as redundant and off-putting as the term 'literary novelist'. — Howard Jacobson Comic Copy Share Image
Politically it's easy to salve one's conscience, no matter that salving it rarely makes the problem go away. You join the Labour… — Howard Jacobson Conscience Copy Share Image
The Christian Armenian story was the Polish Jewish story. The efforts of the Armenians to stay alive in Musa Dagh chimed with… — Howard Jacobson Alive Copy Share Image
To any young person starting out on life and looking to make a quick fortune, I have this advice: forget banking, but… — Howard Jacobson Advice Copy Share Image
How do you go on knowing that you will never again - not ever, ever - see the person you have loved?… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Where there are no spectators, there is no sponsorship. Where there is no sponsorship, there is no money. Where there is no… — Howard Jacobson Money Copy Share Image
People keep saying you can't satirize Trump because he's beyond satire, but it's not difficult to just let him out and let… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I should have conceived the idea for 'The Mighty Walzer' earlier. A boy who dreamed of winning fame, fortune, and the adoration… — Howard Jacobson Beautiful Copy Share Image
Literature more often tells the story of impulses we don't act on than of ones we do. I could joke about the… — Howard Jacobson Anxious Copy Share Image
Of my old tendency to overdo the dedication and deface the title page with florid compliments and obscure quotes which the recipient… — Howard Jacobson Dedication Copy Share Image
I once gave a character in a novel my inability to get past the same point in any work of philosophy: that… — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
You won't get a rational assessment of a political party from a member, and you won't get a reasoned account of the… — Howard Jacobson Being Copy Share Image
“They didn't think he was simple-minded. If anything they thought him a little too clever. But there are times in the history… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
“Before he met Finkler, Treslove had never met a Jew. Not knowingly at least. He supposed a Jew would be like the… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Things happen in 'If This is a Man' that are beyond ordinary daily experience, but it is still us to whom they… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I recall waking to the realisation that I was the best table tennis player under 17 in north Manchester and parts of… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Reading literature remains a civilising activity, no matter that it's literature in which people do and say abominable things and the author… — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
Not everyone is fortunate enough to earn their living playing. But what draws people to art and artists is a desire to… — Howard Jacobson Art Copy Share Image
Trump can be damned to all hell with his enclosed little world in which no thought is possible. But it's the encouraging… — Howard Jacobson America Copy Share Image
