255 Quotes by Howard Jacobson

You can’t have a church town without belief and you can’t have belief without intolerance.

Aren’t all dreads half desires?

That was what living a serious life meant, wasn’t it, honoring the gravity of things by not pretending they were light?

That was what was cruel about superficial change: it exposed what could never change.

I could use the company but I can’t go through the pain of getting it.

Jew-hating was back-of course Jew-hating was back. Soon it would be full-blown Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism. These things didn’t go away. There was nowhere for them to go. They where indestructible, non-biodegradable. They waited in the great rubbish tip that was the human heart.

He would come to school balancing his night’s dreams like an acrobat bearing a human pyramid on his shoulders.

Whoever spoke of a wise lover? The wiser the lover, the longer ago he stopped loving.

But you don’t always have to ask to know.