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" 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. "

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" It's a law of our natures, especially when the political fit is on us, to applaud where we already approve, and deride where we don't. "

Howard Jacobson

Fit

Where

" Rereading one's own novels after many years is always a fraught business, but when a novel has fallen out of print - 'The Very Model of a Man' is the only novel of mine that has - and so crops up infrequently in conversations with readers or indeed with oneself, revisiting it can be perilous. "

" I think one of the main reasons I write is to do better than ranting. The ranting is the opinion, and the writing is not the opinion. I always say that people's opinions are the worst things about them. The words demand a dignity. "

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

" The day I don't attend to my nostrils is the day I will have forsworn that world and become a different person. Someone otherwise preoccupied. Someone who couldn't care less what anyone thinks of his appearance - someone for whom the material life has lost its appeal. "

" If something or someone is being banned, I want to be among the first to know about it. "

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

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

" There mustn't be a moment when we turn on the TV and think, 'There's Trump in the White House' - that must never feel normal. "

" The death of an Italian tailor might not be calamitous in Catania or Cagliari, but the loss to Soho is immeasurable. We don't have Italian tailors we can spare here. "

" Ideally, I would like everyone in the world to read and love my novels. In fact, I can't believe that everyone in the world doesn't love them. What is there not to love? "

Howard Jacobson

Everyone

Believe

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You don't have to believe the electorate secretly hankers for a dose of Marxist-Leninism to accept that there are deep levels of justified bitterness out there waiting to be tapped. "

" Where there are no spectators, there is no sponsorship. Where there is no sponsorship, there is no money. Where there is no money, there are no officials with fingers in the pot. The lesson to be learnt from this is simple. If we want honest sport, we have to stop watching it. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" It would be nice if we could all agree to this proposition: popularity is not the same as achievement. "

" Literature is a house with many mansions. "

" In my experience, every book you write changes the conditions in which you write the next. "

" There is a shop close to where I live, outside which, on certain nights of the month - I've no idea if the transit of the moon determines precisely when - fans of designer skateboards queue from early evening in order - well in order, I presume - to be among the first to jump on a skateboard when the shop opens in the morning. "

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

" You don't remember people you love by the wise things they say but the silly things they do. "

" 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 the throat of grief. Can you make laughter and seriousness so close that they are the same thing? "

" When I first went to Israel, I saw soldiers pushing Palestinians around and thought, 'I can't stand this'. Then I'd meet somebody in a bar saying what wonderful people the Palestinians are and what mamzers the Jews are, and I'd think, 'Hang on'. It should be hard to make up your mind on any serious subject. "

" 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. "

" Artless fairy stories enchant us in our first years and retain their hold on us until our last. "

Howard Jacobson

Stories

Years

" Of the secular mysteries to which I wake with fresh and sometimes angry amazement every day, the queue is the second-most baffling. The first is the fan. "

" There's no law that says you have to be consistent in your preferences. "