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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. "

Howard Jacobson

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" Certainly a curtain has never fallen too soon for me. Every play is too long, even the short ones. Every concert, every film, every television programme the same. "

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" Leaned on by Turkey and understandably wary of false equivalences - for not every death is a massacre, and not every war is genocidal - Israel connives in Armenian genocide denial. "

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

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" 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. "

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" Our connection to the great myths of our natures is murky. A mother might see the Medea in herself without imagining she will ever do away with her children. "

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" Shakespeare's always been sitting on my back, since I began reading. And, certainly, as a writer, he's who I hear all the time. And he's almost indistinguishable now from the English language. I have no sense of what Shakespeare is like. I have no sense of the personality that is Shakespeare. I think, alone among writers, I don't know who he is. "

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" Love is a brainworm. "

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

Howard Jacobson

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

Howard Jacobson

" A novel is not a play. A novel takes one reader at a time into its confidence. It can be shockingly personal. Private, even. "

Howard Jacobson

" 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. "

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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. "

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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. "

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" When I was teaching at Cambridge, I sold handbags on the market. "

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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. "

Howard Jacobson

" In anticipation of a meal - supposing we are with the ideal companion at the best table in the perfect restaurant - we might indeed postpone sadness. And maybe even halfway through, we will remain in tolerably high spirits, with dessert still to come. But as we near the end of eating, we begin to feel anticipatory twinges of anticlimax. "

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" You are changed by the people you are closest to, and this has allowed me to forgive myself for the person I once was. "

Howard Jacobson

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

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" Whoever believes he knows why everything is as it is has hold of nothing. "

Howard Jacobson

" 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.' "

Howard Jacobson

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" Everything is susceptible to corruption of one sort or another - humanity is one big cheat - but it matters particularly with sport, which ceases to be itself the minute the outcome's rigged. "

Howard Jacobson

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

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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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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

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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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" To a philosopher like Nietzsche, the Jew is culpable not for rejecting Christianity but for inventing it. "

Howard Jacobson