“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
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
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
Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it. — Philip Roth Copy Share Image
Suicide is the role you write for yourself. You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged -- where they will… — 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
“But to wish oneself into another's glory, as boy or as man, is an impossibility, untenable on psychological grounds if you are… — 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 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
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 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
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
A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons. — 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
