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
'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the… — 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
Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have… — 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
At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
You don't want to repeat yourself for one. You don't want to fall into the clichés for another. And you don't want… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I'm an Obama supporter. And if you're an Obama supporter that means you had a hard time during the Bush years. — 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
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
Only in America, Rabbi Golden, do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows… — 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
