Alive Quotes by Philip Roth

8 Alive quotes by Philip Roth

Philip Roth’s prose often probes the uneasy edges of identity. In this brief set you’ll encounter his incisive take on what it means to occupy a body and mind that are undeniably alive.

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“To be alive, to him, is to be made of memory—to him if a man’s not made of memory, he’s made of…

Philip Roth

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A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until they die!

Philip Roth

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

Philip Roth

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I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.

Philip Roth

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

Philip Roth

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A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!

Philip Roth

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It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and…

Philip Roth

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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

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More by Philip Roth

“The old intergenerational give-and-take of the country-that-used-to-be, when everyone knew his role and took the rules dead seriously, the acculturating back-and-forth that all of…

Philip Roth

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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…

Philip Roth

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

Philip Roth

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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…

Philip Roth

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To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth. Ivory is the soap that…

Philip Roth

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“There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.”

Philip Roth

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“As far as I can see there is no conquering or exorcising the past with words - words born either of imagination or forthrightness.”

Philip Roth

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The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

Philip Roth

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“What is astonishing is that we, who had no idea how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened.”

Philip Roth

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“Good Christ, a Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!”

Philip Roth

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I am the Raskolnikov of jerking off – the sticky evidence is everywhere!

Philip Roth

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“Better for real things to be uncontrollable, better for one's life to be undecipherable and intellectually impenetrable than to attempt to make casual sense…

Philip Roth