Levant Quotes

Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her. ~ Oscar Levant

It'd be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view. ~ Oscar Levant

Pearl is a disease of oysters. Levant is a disease of Hollywood. ~ Kenneth Tynan

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left. ~ Oscar Levant

Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember. ~ Oscar Levant

[Madame Nhu was] the Sandra Dee of South Vietnam. If I were cast on a desert island with her, I would quickly make friends with the natives. ~ Oscar Levant

This Levantine spirit developed gradually in Beirut after the Industrial Revolution, as the burgeoning Lebanese silk trade and the invention of the steamboat combined to bring men and women of America and Western Europe in large numbers to the Levant. These settlers from the West were Catholic and Protestant missionaries, diplomats, and merchants, Jewish traders, travelers and physicians; and they brought with them Western commerce, manners, and ideas and, most of all, a certain genteel, open, tolerant attitude toward life and toward other cultures. Their mores and manners were gradually imitated by elite elements of the local native populations, who made a highly intelligent blend of these Western ideas with their own indigenous Arabic, Greek, and Turkish cultures, which had their own traditions of tolerance. "To be a Levantine," wrote Hourani, "is to live in two worlds or more at once, without belonging to either." In ~ Thomas L. Friedman

Fame in this country is a religion that demands human sacrifice, a religion to which I do not wish to belong. You start to take yourself so seriously - I saw it happening to me, after I had written my first book at the age of 23. I'd give lectures or seminars, people would tell me how amazingly great I was, and sooner or later, you believe them. You end up exactly with what Oscar Levant said to George Gershwin: "Tell me, George, if you had it to do all over again, would you still fall in love with yourself?" After ~ Ken Wilber

I'm a concert pianist, that's a pretentious way of saying I'm unemployed at the moment. ~ Oscar Levant

I never read bad reviews about myself, because my friends invariably tell me about them. ~ Oscar Levant

I never watch the Dinah Shore show- I'm a diabetic. ~ Oscar Levant

There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side. ~ Oscar Levant

I meant of course the whole portentous scrimmage of sex itself, the act of penetration which could lead a man to despair for the sake of a creature with two breasts and le croissant as the picturesque Levant slang has it. ~ Lawrence Durrell

Ballet is the fairies baseball. ~ Oscar Levant

Do not confuse McGuinty's belief system with a true faith. It is a superstition, the tenets of which are capable of being scientifically disproven. ~ Ezra Levant

I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients. ~ Oscar Levant

I have no trouble with y enemies. But my god damn friends ... they are the ones that keep me walking the floors at night. ~ Oscar Levant

The only non-believer I encountered was Oscar Levant who wouldn't visit Disneyland because he said he had his own hallucinations. ~ Jack Paar

It is a perverse faith, in that it reveres the "environment" ahead of people who live in it. It is a most ascetic superstition, in that it demands we live less happily and less freely and with less prosperity - the opposite of, say, the Protestant work ethic that helped build Ontario. ~ Ezra Levant

A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it. ~ Oscar Levant

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them. ~ Sarah Waters

Talent's like a baby. Wrap it up in wool and it goes to sleep. ~ Oscar Levant

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath. ~ Oscar Levant

So: 'Why did you laugh?' demanded Philippa, and shook Jerott's hand off her arm.

'Oh, that?' said Lymond. 'But, my dear child, the picture was irresistible. Daddy, afflicted but purposeful, ransacking the souks of the Levant for one of his bastards, with an unchaperoned North Country schoolgirl aged - what? twelve? thirteen? - to help change its napkins when the happy meeting takes place.… A gallant thought, Philippa,' said Lymond kindly, sitting down at the table. 'And a touching faith in mankind. But truly, all the grown-up ladies and gentlemen would laugh themselves into bloody fluxes over the spectacle. Have some whatever-it-is. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

There was shish-kabob for lunch, huge, savory hunks of spitted meat sizzling like the devil over charcoal after marinating seventy-two hours in a secret mixture Milo had stolen from a crooked trader in the Levant, served with Iranian rice and asparagus tips Parmesan, followed by cherries jubilee for dessert and then steaming cups of fresh coffee with Benedictine and brandy. ~ Joseph Heller

So in a sense, that little war in the Levant had a horrendous effect in terms of the stability of countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, over the long term. Because once again, it proved to Muslims that their governments couldn't protect them and would side with the enemy. ~ Michael Scheuer

Occasionally, you will come across a wise crack by a pseudoliberal who will refer to God as "she," as if that is the most revolutionary idea known to man, that God could be feminine. Never in such a context is the history of the sexuality of God elucidated, as if it was so obvious to all that God could only be masculine, until the author came along and declared by fiat its femininity. In fact, there did exist matriarchal societies extending from the unknown past into the early historical period. It appears they existed along the "highland zone" which is the foothills extending along the mountainous region from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas. These matriarchal societies influenced the early Sumerian civilization and to a large extent the Minoan civilization, which was one of the few, if not the only matriarchal civilization. These societies were largely overrun and dissipated by invasions of the northern, patriarchal groups but these latter groups did incorporate some matriarchal aspects which exist to this day. For example, although the chief deities of Greece and Rome were masculine, there continued to be a panoply of feminine gods. Or take for example, the history of the Basque people of SW France. Also, when masculine Judaism moved from the Levant to Rome via moderate Christianity and the reconciling Paul, it eventually grafted in the idea of Virgin Mary the Divine. A distant version of this idea stands in New York harbor with her head and torch held high, neither bull dyke ~ Scott Mckee

[ ... ] one must have known the Levant to be able to conceive how readily persons intelligent and otherwise respectable will prefer a lie to the truth, when the slightest advantage is to be gained by the use of a falsehood. ~ George Perkins Marsh

Debbie Reynolds is as wistful as an iron foundry. ~ Oscar Levant

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character. ~ Oscar Levant

I'm a self-made man. Who else would help? ~ Oscar Levant

I'm a study of a man in chaos in search of frenzy. ~ Oscar Levant

A conductor should reconcile himself to the realization that regardless of his approach or temperament the eventual result is the same-the orchestra will hate him. ~ Oscar Levant

Once Dwight Eisenhower makes up his mind, he's full of indecision. ~ Oscar Levant

Have I come at a bad time?" she managed to say without guffawing. I believe I said something on the order of "argh," and compounded my embarrassment by trying to cover myself with the sweatpants I'd picked up off the floor. ~ Jeffrey Cohen

And if our goal as moral citizens is to make the world a better place, then there is only once choice: to pump as much oil as we possibly can out of Fort McMurray. Pump and steam and dig and drill and get that oil out of the sand in any and every way we can. Every drop of oil from Alberta is one less drop from some fascist theocracy, or some brutal warlord; one less cent into the treasuries of Russia's secret police and al-Qaeda's murderers. ~ Ezra Levant

There's nothing wrong with Oscar Levant - nothing a miracle won't cure. ~ Alexander Woollcott

Many in Hollywood viewed the public persona of the young Debbie Reynolds as demure and vulnerable to be a complete facade. Pianist Oscar Levant once quipped, "She's as wistful as an iron factory." ~ Elizabeth Taylor

It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts. ~ Oscar Levant

in the first recorded encounter between Sapiens and Neanderthals, the Neanderthals won. About 100,000 years ago, some Sapiens groups migrated north to the Levant, which was Neanderthal territory, but failed to secure a firm footing. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

When I can't sleep, I read a book by Steve Allen. ~ Oscar Levant

Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic, and so am I. ~ Oscar Levant

My last picture for Warners was Romance on the High Seas. It was Doris Day's first picture; that was before she became a virgin. ~ Oscar Levant

I don't like to play the piano. It makes me too attractive. ~ Oscar Levant

Once he makes up his mind, he's full of indecision. - On Dwight D. Eisenhower ~ Oscar Levant

Freedom of speech trumps political correctness. I would say our magazine would publish an anti-Semitic or Holocaust denying cartoon if it meant Jews around the world were rioting because of it and burning embassies because of a cartoon. We would want to show our readers what all the fuss was about. ~ Ezra Levant

George, if you had to do it all over, would you fall in love with yourself again? ~ Oscar Levant

On Ira Gershwin:
I remember when he was given the manuscript of a novel written by a woman friend who had hopes of having it published. To his astonishment it turned out to be the dirtiest, most pornographic book he had ever read. When the lady mentioned that she intended to use a nom de plume, Ira suggested she call herself Henrietta Miller. ~ Oscar Levant

The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too. ~ Oscar Levant

I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on. ~ Oscar Levant

I've stepped on too many toes on the way down. ~ Oscar Levant

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. ~ Oscar Levant

As politicians weigh courses of action against their political agendas the death toll weighs heavy on the conscience of the world. The once vibrant Syrian streets are now haunted by the souls of the innocent and the historic monuments that told of an unrivalled Arab civilisation no longer stand tall. ~ Aysha Taryam