Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 March 1933
CountryUnited States of America
ideas bullshit people
People were standing up everywhere shouting, "This is me! This is me!" Every time you looked at them they stood up and told you who they were, and the truth of it was that they had no more idea who or what they were than he had. They believed their flashing signs, too. They ought to be standing up and shouting, "This isn't me! This isn't me!" They would if they had any decency. "This isn't me!" Then you might know how to proceed through the flashing bullshit of this world.
crazy lunch trying
I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, "Is he as crazy as I am?" I don’t need that question answered.
fiction reader
The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.
sex matter corruption
How can one say, 'No, this isn't a part of life,' since it always is? The contaminant of sex, the redeeming corruption that de-idealizes the species and keeps us everlastingly mindful of the matter we are.
gains doe mask
The question to ask about the writer isn't 'Why does he behave so badly?' but 'What does he gain by wearing this mask?
new-york people doe
I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.
mother men sick
When he is sick, every man wants his mother.
ideas
One either imposes one's ideas or one is imposed on.
secret revelations sooner-or-later
It's human to have a secret, but it's just as human to reveal it sooner or later.
knowing knows astonishing
All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.
philosophical lasts
Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.
fate vanity fool
--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others
thinking people stories
And as he spoke, I was thinking, 'the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives people turn stories into.
center-fielders
Oh, to be a center fielder, a center fielder- and nothing more