Life Quotes by Philip Roth

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

— Philip Roth

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

— Philip Roth

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

— Philip Roth

“Life is just a short period of time in which we are alive.”

— Philip Roth

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

— Philip Roth

In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees

— Philip Roth

I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.

— Philip Roth

The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

— Philip Roth

You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings.…

— Philip Roth

“My God, he thought, the man I once was! The life that surrounded me! The force that was mine! No "otherness" to…

— Philip Roth

And as he spoke, I was thinking, 'the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives people turn…

— Philip Roth

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

— Philip Roth

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

— Philip Roth

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach-that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never…

— Philip Roth

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…

— Philip Roth

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,…

— Philip Roth

“This ordinarily even-tempered man struck furiously at his heart like some fanatic at prayer, and, assailed by remorse not just for this…

— Philip Roth

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness…

— Philip Roth

My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where…

— Philip Roth

Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the…

— Philip Roth

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure…

— Philip Roth

“Here is someone not set up for life's working out poorly, let alone for the impossible.But who is set up for the…

— Philip Roth

As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their…

— Philip Roth

“Stunned by how little he'd gotten over her and she'd gotten over him, he walked away understanding, as outside his reading in…

— Philip Roth

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

— Philip Roth

“You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and…

— Philip Roth

Doctor, I had never had anybody like her in my life, she was the fulfillment of my most lascivious adolescent dreams– but…

— Philip Roth

“The disruption of the anticipated American future that was simply to have unrolled out of the solid American past, out of each…

— Philip Roth

“But, no, Nathan was utterly unable to involve himself in anything not entirely of his own making. The closest Nathan could ever…

— Philip Roth

“Under the sad end-of-days spell of the smoky dusk and the waning year, of the moon and its ostentatious superiority to the…

— Philip Roth

“The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living,…

— Philip Roth

“Things don't have to reach a peak. They can just go on. You do want to make a narrative out of it,…

— Philip Roth

“Making you believe what he wanted you to believe was his very reason for being. Maybe his only reason. I was intrigued…

— Philip Roth

“I felt as though the skin had been peeled away from half of my body. Half my face had been peeled away,…

— Philip Roth

“You think you know what a man is? You have no idea what a man is. You think you know what a…

— Philip Roth

“It was the summer in America when the nausea returned, when the joking didn't stop, when the speculation and the theorizing and…

— Philip Roth

“The thought of the novelist that matters most is the thought that makes him a novelist. The thought of the novelist lies…

— Philip Roth

“Oh Mickey, it was wonderful, it was fun - the whole kitten and kaboozle. It was like living. And to be denied…

— Philip Roth

“It’s as though not even that most basic level of imaginative thought had been admitted into consciousness to cause the slightest disturbance.…

— Philip Roth

“The kid, whose existence became a hallucination at seven, and a catastrophe at fourteen, and a disaster after that, whose vocation is…

— Philip Roth