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" Does anyone who leaves a Baltic country ever want to return to it? Someone must, I suppose. "

Howard Jacobson

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" 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. "

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" 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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" Literature is a house with many mansions. "

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" I am enthralled until the last ball Djokovic hits, and the moment it is over and he is on his knees eating grass, I sink into my chair, cannot believe I have spent another fleeting fortnight of the few summers I have left caring about the outcome of contests I will have forgotten in the blink of an eye, and begin to question my sanity. "

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" For a lot of readers these days, a book is something you have to agree or disagree with. But you can't agree with a novel. For my generation, it was assumed that a book is a dramatic thing, that the eye of the book is not telling you what to think. "

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" If the academic community gets its way, we will soon all be speaking with a single voice. "

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" We shouldn't be too hard on vanity. It can be a mark of respect for the world. "

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" I once gave a character in a novel my inability to get past the same point in any work of philosophy: that moment when seeing is suddenly occluded and you know you can go no further. "

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" I am happiest now. There's nothing like running out of time to make you realise you're in the right skin, with the right person, and that the Apocalypse will happen with or without you. "

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" I wouldn't dream of watching motor racing, cycling, or golf - which aren't truly sports anyway. "

Howard Jacobson

" 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. "

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" The Christian Armenian story was the Polish Jewish story. The efforts of the Armenians to stay alive in Musa Dagh chimed with those struggling to survive the ghetto. "

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" Even the wordiest of men know there's a time to button it. "

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" 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. "

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" For my own poor part, I go to great lengths to keep my nostrils sightly. "

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" If you had to say in one sentence what being Jewish means, it is being able to make fun of yourself Jewishly. "

Howard Jacobson

" No good writer ever merely cheered us up. But there's an unblinking stare into the darkness of things we have to go elsewhere to find. Jane Austen was made of strong stuff. She was too satiric for D. H. Lawrence's taste and too unforgiving for Kingsley Amis's, but you would still not call her hellish. "

Howard Jacobson

" A system of thought that accepts no inconsistencies is a frightful thing. "

Howard Jacobson

" I would rise, monk-like, at 6 A.M., speak to no one, make tea, and go immediately to my desk from which I didn't move until frills appeared around the edges of my eyes or I heard the sound of a wine bottle being uncorked. It would give the wrong impression to describe these as Writing Days. "

Howard Jacobson

" I have a son, but I've never had a daughter. I have a sister, and my sister had a fairly tempestuous relationship with my dad when she was young, and that was gripping and sometimes upsetting. "

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" 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. "

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" Shake any institution of higher learning, and a dozen boycotters will fall out of it. "

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" The terrorist isn't a problem because he doesn't conform; he's a problem because he does. It's what he conforms to that makes him dangerous. "

Howard Jacobson

" As for 'Great Expectations', it is up there for me with the world's greatest novels, not least as it vindicates plot as no other novel I can think of does, since what there is to find out is not coincidence or happenstance but the profoundest moral truth. "

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" When I see ultra-Orthodox Jews stamping all over Jaffa, or when I see them deciding who is a Jew, I think: 'What's happened to the grand dream of Zionism?' I don't like to see ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. What's wrong with Manchester? "

Howard Jacobson

" Everything is allowable in literature, but what is not allowable in criticism is objection on the grounds of probability. "

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" Let discernment in matters of fashion and entertainment determine who should get the vote, and half the country would be disenfranchised. "

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" Of my old tendency to overdo the dedication and deface the title page with florid compliments and obscure quotes which the recipient cannot read, I will say only that I learnt my lesson when I had to shell out with my own money for a hardback I'd vandalised and now limit myself to 'Good wishes.' "

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" Sometimes it's best to speak from ignorance: that way, you can see the wood without being distracted by the trees. "

Howard Jacobson

" If the Jew transmogrified into the Devil for the medieval church, he retained his devilish characteristics as Christian sentiment found other places to express itself, early socialism being one of them. "

Howard Jacobson