“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 Copy Share Image
“Am I mistaken to think that even back then, in the vivid present, the fullness of life stirred our emotions to an… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense. — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“Now obviously, in peacetime a one-legged catcher, like a one-armed outfielder (such as the Mundys had roaming right), would have been at… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
I haven't written a word of fiction since 2009. I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did and… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“If you don’t know the fantasy life of a country, it’s hard to write fiction about it.” — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“She had been stopped when Morty was killed, stopped from going forward, and all the logic went out of her life. She… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“The disruption of the anticipated American future that was simply to have unrolled out of the solid American past, out of each… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“The kid, whose existence became a hallucination at seven, and a catastrophe at fourteen, and a disaster after that, whose vocation is… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. the illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“Oh Mickey, it was wonderful, it was fun - the whole kitten and kaboozle. It was like living. And to be denied… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“You think you know what a man is? You have no idea what a man is. You think you know what a… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Memories particularly of when they weren’t being what parents are nine-tenths of the time, the taskmasters, the examples, the moral authorities, the… — 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
Doctor, I had never had anybody like her in my life, she was the fulfillment of my most lascivious adolescent dreams– but… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“Where everything is words, you'd think I'd have some mastery and know my way around, but all this churning hatred, each man… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
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 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
