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" A healthy culture doesn't memorialise only those it agrees with. "
Howard Jacobson
Only
Healthy
Culture
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" What isn't for everybody shouldn't be for anybody: the world's opera houses are the reasons we have cardboard cities. "
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Everybody
Houses
Anybody
" I like a singalong. And I'm a bit of a sentimentalist for the past myself. "
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Bit
Myself
Like
" A novel is not a play. A novel takes one reader at a time into its confidence. It can be shockingly personal. Private, even. "
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Play
Confidence
Even
" It is no judgement of a thing outside yourself to say it makes you ill. The wise reader knows that every pronouncement is, to some degree, an act of self-exposure; the book you find too challenging might only show how ill-equipped you are to face its challenge. "
Howard Jacobson
Wise
Book
Challenge
" Does anyone who leaves a Baltic country ever want to return to it? Someone must, I suppose. "
Howard Jacobson
Want
Leaves
Return
" A system of thought that accepts no inconsistencies is a frightful thing. "
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Accepts
Thought
Thing
" I've never owned a T-shirt. I don't like vests or sweaters or cardies with zips. I like a proper shirt with a collar. There's nothing else that I think I look nice in. I don't think there's anything else that other men look nice in, to be honest. Things with words on! Can you imagine? On grown-ups! Words are to make books with. "
Howard Jacobson
Nice
Words
Look
" You know you are grown sentimental when you start counting the cygnets on the duck pond in the park to be sure none has perished since you counted last. "
Howard Jacobson
Duck
Park
Start
" Again and again, Primo Levi's work is described as indispensable, essential, necessary. None of those terms overstate the case, but they do prepare readers new to Levi for a forbiddingly educative experience, making him a writer unlike all others and the experience of reading him a chore. Which it isn't. "
Howard Jacobson
Reading
New
Experience
" Sometimes I felt like my columns were like little novels in themselves. But I wasn't writing what I believed. I'm not interested in what I believe. "
Howard Jacobson
Writing
I Believe
Believe
" I've been married three times. I married the girl next door when I was 22, and I wasn't a good husband, but I wasn't a good anything then. Nowadays, I'm much kinder. "
Howard Jacobson
Good
Husband
Next
" I was a 'reverence for life' man - 'see life steadily and see it whole' - in my days as a lecturer in English lit. We are, I argued, if not exactly 'saved' by reading, at least partially 'repaired' by it: made the better morally and existentially. "
Howard Jacobson
Life
See
Reading
" 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 windows and remember that even those famous late starters Joseph Conrad and George Eliot had started by the age I was now. "
Howard Jacobson
Writing
Me
Famous
" As a Jew, I believe that every argument has a counterargument. "
Howard Jacobson
Believe
Argument
Jew
" 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 beliefs. "
Howard Jacobson
Beliefs
Single
Would
" Passionate dissent from the will of the multitude should be respected, not derided. "
Howard Jacobson
Will
Dissent
Passionate
" Reading literature remains a civilising activity, no matter that it's literature in which people do and say abominable things and the author curses like the very devil. What's at issue is how we describe the way the civilising works. "
Howard Jacobson
Reading
Say
Literature
" 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 have to keep our equilibrium of hate, which is argument. But on the Internet, you find a unanimity of response, and in 'J,' there's a fear of that, that discourse becomes a statement of political or ideological belief. "
Howard Jacobson
Heart
Fear
Hate
" Every time I criticize the anti-Zionists, they say, 'You are trying to silence us.' I don't deny there are some people who are critical of Israel who are not anti-Semitic. But to criticize Israel, and then criticize Zionism, is not quite the same thing. "
Howard Jacobson
Time
Silence
People
" I normally take a long time finding titles. I finish the book and go into sweats for months afterwards trying to think of them. "
Howard Jacobson
Think
Time
Trying
" Whoever believes he knows why everything is as it is has hold of nothing. "
Howard Jacobson
Why
Everything
He
" I never believe any politician talking about popular culture. "
Howard Jacobson
Culture
About
Talking
" If you had to say in one sentence what being Jewish means, it is being able to make fun of yourself Jewishly. "
Howard Jacobson
Yourself
You
Say
" Trump's hobbled vocabulary is now the incontestable stuff of comedy: not just how few his words but how narrow their range, from boastful to irked and back again. For satirists and impressionists, a president who addresses the American people in abbreviated tweetspeak is a gift. "
Howard Jacobson
Comedy
Words
American
" To be clear, I abhor the separation wall. It is an eyesore in itself and makes tangible the failed diplomacy and cruel short-sightedness that causes such misery in the region. No Palestinian can see that wall and not wonder if the Israelis mean it to stay there forever, a constant reminder of what they never intend to change. "
Howard Jacobson
Wonder
Separation
Change
" People often think that you have a sense of humor because you think that life is funny. Life isn't funny at all. It's appalling and tragic. "
Howard Jacobson
Funny
You
Think
" The queue and the fan are, of course, closely related in that fans will queue any length of time in any weather to see, touch, watch, hear, read, wear, or simply enjoy proximity to the object of their devotion. "
Howard Jacobson
See
Enjoy
Time
" If the academic community gets its way, we will soon all be speaking with a single voice. "
Howard Jacobson
Will
Voice
Single
" With 'J', at a deep base level, there is still some comedy, but that masculinist voice that had driven so many of my novels I suddenly did not want to occupy. I wasn't reneging on it; I just didn't want to do it. "
Howard Jacobson
Want
Comedy
Deep
" Non-conformity has always been one of the great British virtues, and that includes non-conformity to things British. "
Howard Jacobson
Virtues
Always
Great