The world according to Fran Lebowitz: Her best life advice we should try to follow

Fran Lebowitz has never owned a mobile phone. She’s never had a computer, laptop or a typewriter. So perhaps it’s slightly ironic then that the 70-year-old New Yorker is now being introduced to a new generation of potential fans via a seven-part Martin Scorsese-directed series, Pretend It’s A City, streamed exclusively on Netflix.

To describe Lebowitz’s career is to list phases of her life: public speaker, journalist, writer (she claims to have suffered writer’s block for over a decade), occasional actor (Scorsese cast her as a judge in Wolf of Wall Street), children’s author, fashion-week attendee, local celebrity and social commentator. She was a modern “slashie” before millennials were even born.

Today Lebowitz is often viewed as a New York cultural icon, like a hot dog or the Empire State Building, rather than distilled into her composite parts. Born in New Jersey, Lebowitz struggled with academic life before moving to the city as a teenager. She lived in the West Village, and aged 21 began work for Changes magazine, before being hired as Andy Warhol as a columnist. She wrote books including Metropolitan Life (1978), and The Fran Lebowitz Reader in 1994. 

Despite not publishing a great deal in the last two decades (she remains on the books as a Vanity Fair columnist), Lebowitz has remained part of the city’s cultural landscape, becoming renowned for her trademark style - tortoiseshell glasses, bobbed haircut, bespoke men’s suit jackets and shirts from Savile Row, and Levi’s jeans. She is also a heavy smoker.

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Lebowitz has spoken publicly in opposition to the gentrification of New York city, particularly Manhattan, the high numbers of tourists in the city, the Donald Trump presidency, the growth of gun ownership in the USA, the critical impact of HIV and AIDS epidemic on the gay community (she is herself, a lesbian), and has said she is the “opposite of lean-in feminism”. 

As well as her vocal critique, Lebowitz has been praised for her pithy insights into modern life and observations on living. The Independent has rounded up some of her best.

On thinking before you speak

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” - The Fran Lebowitz Reader, 1994

On sleeping 

“I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility.” - Metropolitan Life/Social Studies, 2003

On staying at home 

"One thing about leaving your apartment is there's so many other people out there. The great thing about my apartment, aside from the fact that it's a great apartment, is that I control if there are other people in it." - Pretend Its A City documentary, 2020

On drinking

“I haven’t had a drink since I was nineteen. I managed, by the age of nineteen, to drink enough to make myself fairly ill. So the choice was between stopping drinking when I was nineteen or never being twenty. That was the choice I made.” -  Interview, 2002

On being a woman

“You cannot explain to men what it is like to be a woman. You simply can’t. Because you’re not just explaining what it’s like to be a woman, you’re explaining what it’s like to be a girl. You’re explaining what it’s like to be a baby girl. Listen to the way people talk to babies. The tone of voice that people use to a baby girl is different than to a baby boy. So that is from the second you are born. You absolutely cannot convey this to even the most brilliant, well-meaning man on the planet.” - Inside Hook interview, 2018 

On white privilege

“By the time the white person sees the black person standing next to him at what he thinks is the starting line, the black person should be exhausted from his long and arduous trek to the beginning.” Vanity Fair magazine, 1997

On growing up gay

“It didn’t exist. You never saw it. Of course, it must’ve existed, but you never heard about it, you never saw it, there were zero images of it—not just in the culture, but in the world.”  - Inside Hook interview, 2018 

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On the #MeToo movement 

“It never occurred to me this would ever change. Being a woman was exactly the same from Eve till eight months ago. So it never occurred to me that it would change. Ever. I can tell you that it's probably one of the most surprising things in my life. The first forty guys who got caught—I knew almost all of them.” The Cut interview, 2019

On cakes

"If you can eat it, it's not art. If you can say 'I'll have that and a cup of coffee,' it's not art." - Pretend Its A City documentary, 2020

On writing

“But part of writing is slowing down thinking. Because thinking is just something that happens, like inspiration, which is why I can talk—because I don’t have to think about it. And writing is work, which I loathe.” - Inside Hook interview, 2018 

On her lifestyle 

"How would I describe my lifestyle? Well, I can assure you, I would never use the word lifestyle."  - Pretend Its A City documentary, 2020

On shopping

“I hate to shop, and the best thing is at Brooks, you don’t have to shop. No decisions. The only thing that happens occasionally is that a shirt starts coming in a different color. Other than that, you can order all your clothes on the telephone and they’ll send it to your home. So most of my clothes I get from Brooks, for the reasons of convenience and lack of choice.” Interview, 2002

On confidence

“It’s really pleasurable knowing everything. Now, I’m sure that people think, ‘She doesn’t know everything.’ But they’re wrong. I do.” - Public Speaking documentary, 2010

On complaining 

 "If I complain about the things I complain about, will they change? Not so far."  - Pretend Its A City documentary, 2020