British - Novelist | August 25, 1942 -
I've always felt as much outside the Jewish experience as in it. It astonished my family that I wrote about things Jewish.
Howard Jacobson
FamilyExperienceOutsideJewish
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.
PeopleMindSayingThinkThought
When I see ultra-Orthodox Jews stamping all over Jaffa, or when I see them deciding who is a Jew, I think: 'What's happened to the grand dream of Zionism?' I don't like to see ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. What's wrong with Manchester?
ThinkDreamWrongOverSeeI See
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.
MotherTimePeopleMeThinkYou
As a Jew, I believe that every argument has a counterargument.
BelieveArgumentI BelieveEveryJew
Nothing is definite, nothing is finished, nothing is determined.
NothingDeterminedFinishedDefinite
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.
ManDownLineLitEnglishStraight
I was brought up a Jew but, you know, that way of being Jewish - the New York way. We were stomach Jews; we were Jewish-joke Jews. We were bagel Jews. We didn't go to synagogue. I'm frightened of synagogue to this day.
DayNew YorkYouGoNewKnow
I normally take a long time finding titles. I finish the book and go into sweats for months afterwards trying to think of them.
TimeBookThinkFindingTryingLong
People keep saying you can't satirize Trump because he's beyond satire, but it's not difficult to just let him out and let him walk upon the stage and say his own words.
WalkWordsPeopleSayingYouSay
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.
ChangeGreatMeIdeasWindWorld
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.'
PoliticsPeopleDemocracyThinking
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