Joseph Epstein
Joseph Epstein
Joseph Epstein, also known as Colonel Gilles and as Joseph Andrej, was a Polish-born Jewish communist activist and a French Resistance leader during World War II. He was executed by the Germans...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth9 January 1937
CountryUnited States of America
Joseph Epstein quotes about
magazines want mail
A writer can get into a vast deal of trouble through misquotation. If you ever want to receive lots of mail, I recommend you get a Shakespeare quote wrong in a magazine or newspaper.
reading small-numbers people
While reading writers of great formulatory power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C’mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.
order giving letters
One serious drawback about letters is that, in order to get them, one must send some out. When it comes to the mail, I feel it is better to receive than to give.
truman
I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.
secret way speaking-french
By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don't hesitate.
complainers complaints has-beens
I am basically a complainer and all the grounds for complaint have been swept out from under me.
pleasure jew anti-semitism
One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don't have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.
moon people may
Many moons ago dictionaries of quotations may have been less needed than they are today. In those good/bad old days, people walked around with entire poems and all the Shakespearean soliloquies in their heads....
intelligent cheerful flow
We who are quotatious are never truly alone, but always hear the cheerful flow of remarks made by dead writers so much more intelligent than we.
inspirational dream man-of-my-dreams
What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, and what we do to make them come about.
mistake genius sometimes
If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses?
sloth knows know-how
I know how deeply slothful I am.
two lunch phones
I know how many days in which I have just answered e-mail, had three phone calls and a two hour lunch. Poof, gone. They are not infrequent.
inspirational adrift realms
Within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.