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" If you want a good life, don't succeed at anything too early or too well. And don't choose a profession that attracts money or attention. The minute people want to see you doing what you do, you're finished. "

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" Nobody who's thought about politics or democracy over the thousands of years that people have been thinking about democracy hasn't come up against the fact that the people will often be wrong. And what do you do when they are? You can't just say, 'Well, it's the will of the people.' "

Howard Jacobson

Thinking

Democracy

Politics

" Not everyone is fortunate enough to earn their living playing. But what draws people to art and artists is a desire to enjoy the propinquity of play. For it is the very freedom of the imagination. And what else were we born to do, but imagine freely? "

" Let's be honest with one another: almost everything is too long except life, and I know people who wouldn't even concur with that exception. "

" The obligation to remember is inscribed on every Holocaust memorial, but even the words 'Never Forget' become irksome eventually. "

" Among the many arguments to be made against cultural revolutions is that they are monotonous in spirit and monomaniacal in intention. "

" 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. "

" One of my agents once said I was one of the most dangerous men in London, and I was so excited by that. For a few days, I walked around Soho snarling. "

" Nostalgic myself, I am a sucker for other men's nostalgia. "

Howard Jacobson

I Am

Nostalgia

" There's a problem with narratives. Most that spring to mind are fictional. "

" Sometimes, a writer's life alone can tell a story. "

" It's always nice to be praised, and insofar as a prize is a form of praise, you're glad when you get it. "

" I've always felt as much outside the Jewish experience as in it. It astonished my family that I wrote about things Jewish. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Alarm bells ring when a politician stands haughty upon his honour. "

" Not every anti-Semite is Joseph Goebbels. You can not like Jews much and be no great harm to them. "

" My mother's side taught me to be a little bit afraid of everything. For a long time, I was quiet and cautious. But shyness makes you notice other people's excruciations and feel for them. I think that made a writer of me. "

Howard Jacobson

People

Mother

" What isn't for everybody shouldn't be for anybody: the world's opera houses are the reasons we have cardboard cities. "

" When emotion rules, every fool thinks that he is holy. "

" I never believe any politician talking about popular culture. "

" Words do not necessarily make us moral. And there have been presidents before who have stumbled over syntax and looked foolish when the words they have been forced to speak have been their own. But Trump is uniquely stunted. A child listening to two of his speeches could reproduce a third without the use of a dictionary. "

" I'm an old-fashioned English lit. man. Straight down the line - it's George Eliot, it's Dickens, it's Dr. Johnson, it's Jane Austen. "

" The more educated we are, the less we are prepared to tolerate views contrary to our own. "

Howard Jacobson

Prepared

Educated

" You don't have to be in pursuit of a body beautiful to wish yourself to be the flexuously willowy creature you once were or, failing that, just to be able to pick up something you have dropped. "

" This is now the way our culture prioritises. Look up 'Steppenwolf,' and you'll get the band before the novel. Look up Jesus Christ, and you'll get the musical. Look up Princess Link-a-din and you'll get LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network. "

" Economics is not a science; it is a quasi-religion: part superstition, part mystique, part sentimentality. Bankers dream like other men, the only difference being that when their dreams turn to nightmares, we all lose sleep. There can be no trusting the muttering of any prelate when it comes to money. "

" Sentimentality works by our seeing only what we want to see. "

" Poets are not meant to be in competition. "

" 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. "

" I am in denial about sport. I refuse to accept that I watch it. I am not the kind of man who watches sport. "