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
thinking stories form
I think the story is my form.
thinking envy anti-semitism
I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.
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.
regret wife terrible
My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't
people musical training
I just know so many people who have six or seven foreign languages and have read everything and have musical training and they are still dorks