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
may faces tape
I am not merely a habitual quoter but an incorrigible one. I am, I may as well face it, more quotatious than an old stock-market ticker-tape machine, except that you can't unplug me.
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....
class style may
The decisive moment in the defeat of upper class, capital-S, Society may have come when, in newspapers all over the nation, what used to be call the Society page was replaced by the Style section.
envy may sin
In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.
We know the ideal isn't where the action is.
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.
bad good superior talk time
If superior talk is your idea of a good time it's (hell) not really such a bad place to end up
secret way speaking-french
By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don't hesitate.
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.
inspirational adrift realms
Within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
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.
sloth knows know-how
I know how deeply slothful I am.
mistake genius sometimes
If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses?
inspirational dream man-of-my-dreams
What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, and what we do to make them come about.