I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive. — 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 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
“There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.” — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons. — 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 know I'm not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
We live in an age in which the imagination of the novelist is helpless against what he knows he is going to… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“(Writing is) the transformation, through an elaborate impersonation, of a personal emergency into a public act (in both senses of that word).” — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure… — 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
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
I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“Zuckerman, sucker though he was for seriousness, was still not going to be drawn into a discussion about agents and editors. If… — 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
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
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 know I’m not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
The thought of the novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight… — 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
When you decide 'to be a writer,' you don't have the faintest idea of what the work is like. When you begin,… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“This is the plot up to the moment when the writer leaves the woman still dolefully enmeshed in it, and, suitcase in… — 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
“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
“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
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
“Perhaps,' I wearily suggest, 'reading is the opiate of the educated classes.' 'Is it? Are you thinking of becoming a flower child?'… — 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
Eventually the writing takes time. What I want to do is get the story down and I want to know what happens… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of 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
“The operating room turns you into somebody who's never wrong. Much like writing." "Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The… — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
“Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it. Interview in Esquire Magazine 10/10” — 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
