If we doubt the power of literature and art to civilise, how come no one has ever been mugged by a person carrying a well-thumbed copy of 'Middlemarch' in his back pocket? — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Everything is allowable in literature, but what is not allowable in criticism is objection on the grounds of probability. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
There's a simple arithmetical logic at work. Build more unaffordable and not always architecturally sympathetic apartments, watch the rents rise, the tarts leave, the… — Howard Jacobson 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 itself. We… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I was a 'reverence for life' man - 'see life steadily and see it whole' - in my days as a lecturer in English… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
How Donald Trump has come so far with so few words - how he even managed to keep up conversationally with all those beauty… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
It is a nonsense to me when people come along and tell me not to be pessimistic; or that culture has always been going… — 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 out of… — 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That a nation's statuary will reflect beliefs and attitudes that are no longer current or congenial hardly needs arguing.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, it doesn't… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
“Was he a bad man or just a foolish one? He didn't feel bad to himself. As a husband he believed himself to be… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
The young come in many guises: vigorous and passionate, vindictive and mean-spirited. And not every person over 65 is dozing in a retirement home. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
To a philosopher like Nietzsche, the Jew is culpable not for rejecting Christianity but for inventing it. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Shakespeare's always been sitting on my back, since I began reading. And, certainly, as a writer, he's who I hear all the time. And… — Howard Jacobson 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 anything else. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
The Stop The War Coalition is a sort of home to Jew-haters because its hate music about Israel is so catchy. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
