Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 March 1933
CountryUnited States of America
Philip Roth quotes about
intelligent understanding scales
Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
dark goes-on convince
Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.
sea feelings demand
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.
commitment writing use
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.
silence mind literature
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.
too-much human-nature humans
You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.
knows
Everyone becomes a part of history whether they like it or not and whether they know it or not.
playfulness seriousness closest
Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.
blue funeral waiting
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.
maps body toes
I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions. You can travel the length and breadth of my body over superhighways of shame and inhibition and fear.
communication ducks bombs
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!
writing wrecks may
Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. the illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life.
rooms pleasure persons
The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.
morning jobs real
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.