88 Quotes by Joseph Epstein

I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.

I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.

That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.

No one has really ever defined what a friend is.

I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.

We do not choose to be born.We do not--most of us, choose to die, or the times or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live--Courageously or in cowardice, Honorably or dishonorably, With purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial. What makes us significant is what we DO, Or REFUSE TO DO. WE DECIDE and WE CHOOSE--and so we give definition to our lives.

The problem for me is that reading is, I won't say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.

A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.

No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.