Philip Roth Quotes

Quotes about:

• All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.

  Philip Roth

  Knowing, Knows, Astonishing

  Philip Roth (2000). “The Human Stain: A Novel”, p.209, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  28 Copy quote

• Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

  Philip Roth

  Age, Battle, Massacres

  Philip Roth (2006). “Everyman”, Random House Large Print Publishing

  53 Copy quote

• He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

  Philip Roth

  Lessons, Worst, Teach

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Jul 27, 2011

  57 Copy quote

• You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

  Philip Roth

  Love You, Telling The Truth, Force

  "Portnoy's Complaint". Book by Philip Roth, January 12, 1969.

  59 Copy quote

• The danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can't stop.

  Philip Roth

  Hatred, Danger, Hundred

  Philip Roth (2000). “The Human Stain: A Novel”, p.328, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  31 Copy quote

• The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

  Philip Roth

  Love, Fall, Thinking

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Jan 22, 2017

  51 Copy quote

• Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.

  Philip Roth

  Growing Up, Thinking, Worry

  "The Dying Animal". Book by Philip Roth, 2001.

  17 Copy quote

• I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

  Philip Roth

  Lying, Writing, Thinking

  "The Ghost Writer". Book by Philip Roth, 1979.

  39 Copy quote

• The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

  Philip Roth

  Work, Writing, Sisterhood

  1979 In the NewYorkTimes Book Review,15 Jul.

  63 Copy quote

• You tasted it. Isn't that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That's all we're given in life, that's all we're given of life. A taste. There is no more.

  Philip Roth

  Taste, Enough, Given

  Philip Roth (2001). “The Dying Animal”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  28 Copy quote

• I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

  Philip Roth

  Writing, Commitment, Use

  "Philip Roth Goes Home Again" by Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. October 7, 2010.

  36 Copy quote

• There's something every woman wants, and that's a man to blame.

  Philip Roth

  Men, Want, Blame

  Philip Roth (2013). “The Counterlife”, p.75, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

  Philip Roth

  Memories, Past, Facts

  Philip Roth (1989). “The facts: a novelist's autobiography”, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

  Philip Roth

  Reading, Fiction, Noise

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Jun 17, 2011

  40 Copy quote

• Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.

  Philip Roth

  Alive, Life Is, Periods

  "Phillip Noyce and Ewan McGregor Jump on Philip Roth’s ‘American Pastoral’ – But Is It a Good Idea?" by Ryan Lattanzio, www.indiewire.com. June 23, 2014.

  10 Copy quote

• It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

  Philip Roth

  Real, Lying, People

  Philip Roth (1985). “Reading myself and others”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  24 Copy quote

• When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

  Philip Roth

  Believe, Religion, World

  "Philip Roth on Fame, Sex and God". Interview with Rita Braver, www.cbsnews.com. October 3, 2010.

  34 Copy quote

• How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.

  Philip Roth

  Life Is, Easy, Easy Life

  Philip Roth (2006). “Novels, 1973-1977”

  10 Copy quote

• The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.

  Philip Roth

  Rooms, Pleasure, Persons

  Philip Roth (2000). “The Human Stain: A Novel”, p.232, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  17 Copy quote

• Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.

  Philip Roth

  War, Affection, Subordination

  Philip Roth (2001). “The Dying Animal”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  18 Copy quote

• Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.

  Philip Roth

  Playfulness, Seriousness, Closest Friends

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Aug 08, 2011

  17 Copy quote

• Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.

  Philip Roth

  Materials, Happens

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Philip Roth

  Reality, Way

  Philip Roth (2006). “Everyman”, Random House Large Print Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Philip Roth

  Player, Self, Identity

  "The Counterlife". Book by Philip Roth, 1986.

  7 Copy quote

• World War III will be triggered off not by suppressed nationalists seeking political independence, as happened the first time around when the Serbs at Sarajevo shot the heir to the Austrian throne, but by some semiliterate, whacked-out "loner" who lobs a rocket into a nuclear arsenal in order to impress Brooke Shields.

  Philip Roth

  War, Order, Political

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

  31 Copy quote

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