Philip Roth Quotes - Page 2

You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.

Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.

Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

Everyone becomes a part of history whether they like it or not and whether they know it or not.

There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

You can't write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.

When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

People are unjust to anger - it can be enlivening and a lot of fun.

All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self. What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself - a troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required. I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.

Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.

You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings. You'll be washed out to sea and never seen again.

American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.

My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets — no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!

Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it.

A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.

I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.

For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.

Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.

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

It's amazing how much punishment we can take.