Philip Roth Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.

  Philip Roth

  Morning, Jobs, Real

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• It's amazing how much punishment we can take.

  Philip Roth

  Punishment, Suffering

  Philip Roth (2007). “Exit Ghost”, p.86, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.

  Philip Roth

  Too Much, Human Nature, Humans

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Jun 11, 2016

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• The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.

  Philip Roth

  People, Alive, Facts

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Jul 09, 2011

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• You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.

  Philip Roth

  Responsibility, Thinking, Make You Think

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• How Far back must we go to discover the beginning of trouble?

  Philip Roth

  Trouble

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• The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.

  Philip Roth

  Fiction, Reader

  Philip Roth, George John Searles (1992). “Conversations with Philip Roth”, p.186, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Sex is all the enchantment required. Do men find women so enchanting once the sex is taken out? Does anyone find anyone that enchanting unless they have sexual business with them? Who else are you enchanted by? Nobody.

  Philip Roth

  Sex, Taken, Men

  Philip Roth (2001). “The Dying Animal”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This is what you know about someone you have to hate: he charges you with his crime and castigates himself in you.

  Philip Roth

  Hate, Crime, Knows

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Jul 07, 2016

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• The only way to have a funeral is to invite everyone who ever knew the person and just wait for the accident to happen-somebody who comes in out of the blue and says the truth. Everything else is table manners.

  Philip Roth

  Blue, Funeral, Waiting

  Philip Roth, Ross Miller (2008). “Novels & other narratives, 1986-1991”

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• No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game.... It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives.

  Philip Roth

  Sex, Thinking, Games

  Philip Roth (2001). “The Dying Animal”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

  Philip Roth

  Feelings, Phrases, Spokes

  Philip Roth (1989). “Goodbye, Columbus”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Teaching ... particularly in the 1990s, teaching what is far and away the dumbest generation in American history, is the same as walking up Broadway in Manhattan talking to yourself, except instead of eighteen people who hear you in the street talking to yourself, they're all in the room. They know, like, nothing.

  Philip Roth

  Teaching, Talking, People

  Philip Roth (2010). “The Human Stain”, p.190, Random House

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• Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!

  Philip Roth

  Dream, Doctors, Needs

  Philip Roth (2005). “Novels, 1967-1972”

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• Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid

  Philip Roth

  Doctors

  Portnoy's Complaint (1969)

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• Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

  Philip Roth

  Intelligent, Understanding, Scales

  Philip Roth, George John Searles (1992). “Conversations with Philip Roth”, p.266, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place - your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love!

  Philip Roth

  Art, Grief, Writing

  Philip Roth (1998). “I Married a Communist”, p.230, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until they die!

  Philip Roth

  Boys, Men, Years

  Portnoy's Complaint (1969)

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• I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.

  Philip Roth

  Smart, Writing, Fiction

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Aug 17, 2014

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• I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk. You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not. Anything other than this talk.

  Philip Roth

  Book, Fighting, Years

  "'It No Longer Feels a Great Injustice That I Have to Die'". Interview with Martin Krasnik, www.theguardian.com. December 14, 2005.

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• --nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

  Philip Roth

  Fate, Vanity, Fool

  Philip Roth (2004). “The Plot Against America: A Novel”, p.213, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I am the Raskolnikov of jerking off – the sticky evidence is everywhere!

  Philip Roth

  Raskolnikov, Evidence, Sticky

  Philip Roth (1969). “Portnoy's complaint”, Random House Inc

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• I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.

  Philip Roth

  Writing, Looks, Turns

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Aug 27, 2012

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• We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there’s no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It’s in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark.

  Philip Roth

  Errors, Grace, Abuse

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Nov 21, 2016

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• It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and he said to me, I was maybe 9, and he said to me, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off, put a blanket on you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right. ... Then the best part of it is that when you wake up, for the first 15 seconds, you have no idea where you are. You're just alive. That's all you know. And it's bliss, it's absolute bliss.

  Philip Roth

  Father, Sleep, Kids

  "At 80, Philip Roth Reflects On Life, Literature And The Beauty Of Naps". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. March 23, 2013.

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