Sometimes I felt like my columns were like little novels in themselves. But I wasn't writing what I believed. I'm not interested… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Among the many arguments to be made against cultural revolutions is that they are monotonous in spirit and monomaniacal in intention. — Howard Jacobson Intention Copy Share Image
It would be nice if we could all agree to this proposition: popularity is not the same as achievement. — Howard Jacobson Achievement Copy Share Image
“At a certain age men began to shrink, and yet it was precisely at that age that their trousers became too short… — Howard Jacobson Old age Copy Share Image
Sometimes it's best to speak from ignorance: that way, you can see the wood without being distracted by the trees. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
I have made of Sydney, to which I sailed in 1965, a paradise beyond the powers of fancy. — Howard Jacobson Australia 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
You don't divorce simply because your spouse has a number of qualities you dislike and on occasions makes your life uncomfortable. If… — Howard Jacobson Divorce Copy Share Image
Marriage is like a barbecue. When you light a barbecue, it's very exciting to see the flames. That's lovely, but you have… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
If you want a good life, don't succeed at anything too early or too well. And don't choose a profession that attracts… — Howard Jacobson Attention Copy Share Image
“He let himself be storm-tossed, riding her billowing sea. When she held him like this he could see nothing, but the colour… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
Again and again, Primo Levi's work is described as indispensable, essential, necessary. None of those terms overstate the case, but they do… — Howard Jacobson Experience Copy Share Image
That's the great test: if you're going to be a great comic writer, not a humorist, you've got to take it into… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
For a lot of readers these days, a book is something you have to agree or disagree with. But you can't agree… — Howard Jacobson Book 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… — Howard Jacobson 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
People often think that you have a sense of humor because you think that life is funny. Life isn't funny at all.… — Howard Jacobson Comedy 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
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
“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
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
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
“Why is dissatisfaction taken to be a mark of failing powers and patience, when it might just as easily be understood as… — 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
The more educated we are, the less we are prepared to tolerate views contrary to our own. — Howard Jacobson 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
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
Show me a novel that's not comic, and I'll show you a novel that's not doing its job. — Howard Jacobson Books Copy Share Image
Maybe we'd forgotten what socialists are meant to look and sound like. Well, now we've been reminded. They're meant to look and… — 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… — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
The girls pick snouts from the pack as though they're chocolates and it matters which they select. — Howard Jacobson Copy Share Image
“So the mathematician and the artist are companioned in the same dark, and do obeisance to the same gods.” — Howard Jacobson Art Copy Share Image
The environment in which I studied was so safe, I thought I would die from the boredom of it. — Howard Jacobson Boredom Copy Share Image
The 'Reader's Digest' used to run a feature called 'It Pays to Increase Your Word Power.' The new wisdom - post-Trump and… — Howard Jacobson Brexit Copy Share Image
