If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really. — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Literature got me into this mess and literature is going to have to get me out of it. — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.” — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction. — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life. — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I work most days and if you work most days and you get at least a page done a day, then at… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Any satirist writing a futuristic novel who had imagined a President Reagan during the Eisenhower years would have been accused of perpetrating… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I work just as much as I always worked. And I can't explain the fact that there have been a series of… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“...I finally went back to my seat in the second row and sat there doing what I've done throughout my professional life:… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
When I have a first draft, I have a floor under my feet that I can walk on. Then, especially with the… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews,… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“ Whoever looks for the writer’s thinking in the words and thoughts of his characters is looking in the wrong direction. Seeking… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“Making you believe what he wanted you to believe was his very reason for being. Maybe his only reason. I was intrigued… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“I would browse for half an hour or so in the secondhand bookstores in the neighborhood. Owning my own 'library' was my only… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“If you're from New Jersey,” Nathan had said, “and you write thirty books, and you win the Nobel Prize, and you live… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“Carrying his books from one life into the next was nothing new to Zuckerman. He had left his family for Chicago in… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“I think I should learn to get along better with people," he explained to Miss Benson one day, when she came upon him in… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I don't wish to be a slave any longer to the stringent exigencies of literature. — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“The thought of the novelist that matters most is the thought that makes him a novelist. The thought of the novelist lies… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.” — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“What is astonishing is that we, who had no idea how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened.” — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
I am the Raskolnikov of jerking off – the sticky evidence is everywhere! — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
