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
beer connected football male rest suppose
I suppose it's because beer is connected to football broadcasts and the rest of it. Beer . . . accompanies male activities.
reading sacred serious
The problem for me is that reading is, I won't say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.
laughing might should
I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.
defined
No one has really ever defined what a friend is.
envy kind feels
Envy is never general, but always very particular - at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.
envy may sin
In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.
teacher teaching satisfaction
What all great teachers appear to have in common is love of their subject, an obvious satisfaction in rousing this love in their students, and an ability to convince them that what they are being taught is deadly serious
reading mean thoughtful
Culture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.
bears pounds literature
Someone — Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? — once said that anything that can be read twice is literature; I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable.
married
I am married to someone I love.
breathing-space aggravation absence
What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.
distance giving looks
I know from the middle distance I give off the look of being prolific, which is a funny compliment to receive.
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.