255 Quotes by Howard Jacobson

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.

Whoever has once been truly unsettled by a work of the imagination will never give loyalty to a single idea, belief system, religious faith or party.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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