Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 March 1933
CountryUnited States of America
philosophical lasts
Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.
fate vanity fool
--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others
center-fielders
Oh, to be a center fielder, a center fielder- and nothing more
climbing childhood tree
In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees
dream confused doctors
Doctor, I had never had anybody like her in my life, she was the fulfillment of my most lascivious adolescent dreams– but marry her, can she be serious? You see, for all her preening and perfumes, she has a very low opinion of herself, and simultaneously– and here is the source of much of our trouble-a ridiculously high opinion of me. And simultaneously, a very low opinion of me! She is one confused Monkey, and, I'm afraid, not too very bright.
firsts
Let's hope the first comes first.
dying illness ill
Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.
writing mind fiction
What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.
boys men years
A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until they die!
ideas history stories
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
loyalty daughter intelligent
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
running hills profit
Should you protect profits? Yes. But run for the hills? No.
memories past facts
Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
wish
The signore...wishes her to begin at the beginning.