Fran Lebowitz has expressed her distaste at the idea of living with another person, remarking that she is too accustomed to having her own space.
The American author, known for works such as 1978’s Metropolitan Life and 1981’s Social Studies, has lived alone her entire adult life.
She moved to New York from Morristown, New Jersey, when she was 19 in the hope of becoming a poet. Instead, she worked as a taxi driver and cleaner before landing a column with Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, aged 21.
In a new interview with The Observer, she extolled the merits of having her own home when asked if she ever grew lonely.
“I’m a split person,” she explained. “Half of me is very sociable. I do like parties, I like to go out, I like to go to dinner, I have my friends – and then part of me is really selfish. I have more than enough company.”
She continued: “I’ve lived alone my whole life. The idea of living with someone else, I find so horrible. I would do anything in order to afford to live by myself, because the idea of a life spent yelling: ‘Don’t move this! Why did you put it there?’ is not tolerable.”
She was speaking ahead of a UK run of shows taking place in September, including one at London’s Barbican Centre.
The events will feature her in conversation, offering insights into issues ranging from gender, gay rights, the media, celebrity culture and tourism.
In an interview with The Independent last year, Lebowitz called herself a “terrible girlfriend” due to her total lack of interest in “domestic life and monogamy”.
“If you’re choosing someone that way, it’s more like you’re hiring someone. So that’s my idea of romance,” she said. “But friendships, you really choose those.”
She described herself as a “really good friend” who is “loyal… I expect friends to be loyal to me. Someone said, ‘You’re like someone in the mafia’; I said, ‘That’s right’.”
“To me, friendships are my most important relationships,” she added. “Friendships are the only relationships that we choose. Certainly, we don’t choose our families and people always talk about choice and romantic relationships but it’s just not true.
“Romantic attraction, erotic attraction is a chemical response, you’re not choosing that.”
