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

Howard Jacobson

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" Passionate dissent from the will of the multitude should be respected, not derided. "

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" There was no question of ever sending us to Jewish schools... They wanted us out there. They wanted us to be lawyers and doctors. They wanted us out of the religious thing, apart from that ethnic bonding. "

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" I have made of Sydney, to which I sailed in 1965, a paradise beyond the powers of fancy. "

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" With 'J', at a deep base level, there is still some comedy, but that masculinist voice that had driven so many of my novels I suddenly did not want to occupy. I wasn't reneging on it; I just didn't want to do it. "

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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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" The Stop The War Coalition is a sort of home to Jew-haters because its hate music about Israel is so catchy. "

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

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" 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. "

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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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" 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. "

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

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" If we declare ourselves, as readers, to be on the side of life, the question has to be asked what sort of life we are on the side of. "

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

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" Don't imagine that a word you say is going to make a blind bit of difference. "

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