Daily Inspiration Quote by Mordecai Richler

Richler’s line is a perfect capsule of his comic method: self-description as provocation, delivered with the timing of someone who knows exactly which nerves he’s touching. “Impeccable” is the tell. Paranoia is, by definition, irrational and messy; he polishes it into a credential, like a resume bullet point. The joke isn’t simply self-deprecation. It’s an aggressive reclamation of a stereotype that has been used to patronize Jews and to diminish writers as neurotic malcontents. If you’re going to diagnose me, Richler implies, I’ll beat you to it and make it look silly.

The triad matters: Canada, writer, Jewish. Each category comes with a cultural script. Canadian identity is often framed as cautious, watchful, perpetually in the shadow of larger powers; the writer is the professional suspicious mind, trained to read subtext and expect betrayal; Jewishness carries the historical memory that makes “paranoia” feel less like pathology than like an inherited survival skill. Richler stacks them, not to plead for sympathy, but to set up a trap: the audience laughs, then realizes the laughter is built on real histories of marginality and being talked about.

Contextually, it lands as a sly defense of his own combative public persona. Richler was frequently accused of stirring trouble, especially when he wrote about Quebec nationalism and Jewish communal politics. The line suggests his suspicion isn’t a character flaw; it’s a finely tuned instrument. The subtext: if you think I’m overreacting, you probably haven’t been listening closely enough.