Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 March 1933
CountryUnited States of America
memories past imagination
Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
blue funeral waiting
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 who comes in out of the blue and says the truth. Everything else is table manners.
sex thinking games
No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game.... It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives.
art grief writing
Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place - your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love!
hatred danger hundred
The danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can't stop.
writing reality america
You can't write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.
father sleep kids
It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and he said to me, I was maybe 9, and he said to me, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off, put a blanket on you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right. ... Then the best part of it is that when you wake up, for the first 15 seconds, you have no idea where you are. You're just alive. That's all you know. And it's bliss, it's absolute bliss.
book adventure writing
A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.
people alive facts
The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.
sea feelings demand
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 washed out to sea and never seen again.
growing-up thinking worry
Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.
intelligent understanding scales
Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
angel
There are no uncontaminated angels
knows
Everyone becomes a part of history whether they like it or not and whether they know it or not.