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

Howard Jacobson

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" 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

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

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" No traveller ever sets out with so little idea of where he is going or how he is going to get there than an artist does. And no traveller ever gets to a more wonderful place. "

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" You can imprison but you can't enslave a man who argues with his books. "

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" The novels I planned to write were never going to be funny books about Jews. They were going to be country house books. Only later on could I write what I knew I was best at writing about. "

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" Making America great again, as if to keep the world out. The world and all its fresh ideas and everything that's new and exhilarating and the wind of change that should blow through the world - block it out, wall ourselves up. That for me goes with a small vocabulary. A narrow, confining vocabulary. "

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" It is against the spirit of our non-discriminating times to openly prefer one sort of music to another, so let's just say that hearing grand orchestral music in a public place is exhilarating in a way that hearing popular music never can be, if only because, in a popular music age, a full orchestra is less familiar to our ears. "

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

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" Many a woman has suffered at the hands of a Paul Morel. There's more than one way of being brutal. "

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" Sensitivity doesn't necessarily make you easy to get on with. "

Howard Jacobson

" 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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" Literature is a house with many mansions. "

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" Do you want to be strangely various, or do you want to be purely yourself? Either way, revere no one. "

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" 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. "

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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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" 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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" You cannot exercise and be amused about it. You cannot integrate the dying bug into your core workout and hold to the position that you are a spiritual being. In this way, the body and the mind are each other's opposite unto death, which is why you have to choose which of them you are going to follow. "

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" You won't get a rational assessment of a political party from a member, and you won't get a reasoned account of the joys of being 'linked' from somebody who's already 'in.' "

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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. "

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" I've always liked older women. One sad thing about being my age is that there are no older women. I used to amuse my mother's friends even at five or six with witty turns of phrase. Somehow, I just knew how to be funny. "

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" Failing to see the point is not a virtue. "

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" Literature more often tells the story of impulses we don't act on than of ones we do. I could joke about the Cain and Abel story with my brother without expecting him to be worried, though it's always possible he was more anxious than he let on. "

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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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" 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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" It's a weakness of mine to forget what it is I've just been talking about so that when people make witty allusions to it, I stare at them open-mouthed, not knowing what they're talking about. "

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" It isn't only in the name of free speech that the views of an itchy polemicist should be tolerated - and I say itchy polemicist promoting thought, not itchy ideologue promoting violence - but because provocation is indispensable to the workings of a sound, creative culture. "

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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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" One of the great things about us Jews is that we tell the best jokes. Part of the reason is we tell jokes against ourselves - before anyone else gets to do it. "

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" If it's bathos you want - and I suspect we are all bathos junkies in the end - nothing gives it to you quite like watching sport. Unless it's playing sport. "

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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. "

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