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
book people soul
I am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a single—and singular—piece of wisdom so penetrating, so soul stirring, so utterly applicable to my own life as to make all the bad books I have read seem well worth the countless hours spent on them. My guess is that this wisdom, if it ever arrives, will do so in the form of a generalization.
truman
I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.
laughing might should
I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.
drinking wine beer
That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.
defined
No one has really ever defined what a friend is.
thinking envy anti-semitism
I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.
reading sacred serious
The problem for me is that reading is, I won't say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.
jobs cat animal
A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.
running nostalgia deeper
No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.
fun envy sin
Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.
ice icy shows
Not to like ice cream is to show oneself uninterested in food.
life dream country
All men and women are born, live, suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
giving important purpose
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.
writing thinking discovery
For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery