Philip Roth

Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 March 1933
CountryUnited States of America
admission books books-and-reading
It's an admission of the books into perpetuity.
reading two focus
To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.
book reading mean
You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them.
reading noise fiction
Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.
touch
I was back in touch with my place,
everybody graduated life plain running stop
With the draft, everybody was involved. Everybody was fodder. When you got to be 21, 22 and graduated from college, for two years your life stopped. If you had been running in the direction of your life, you had to stop and do this other thing which was, if not menacing, just plain boring.
history nightmare trying
History ... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
academy choice expected mix tends unexpected
The Academy tends to like to mix the expected with the unexpected choices,
fun people unjust
People are unjust to anger - it can be enlivening and a lot of fun.
character men envy
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
together twain
Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the 20th century,
czech goes matters met occurred society work writer writers
When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and everything matters
depict observed reckless seemed talked trying
It seemed pretty reckless and vicious. I was just trying to depict the way it was, the way it sounded, what they talked about. This was just what I observed or imagined.
activity domination fact fall funds investment microsoft sign stock symptom traders
The fact that a stock like Microsoft could fall so much is a sign that there is very little investment activity in the market. It is a symptom of the domination of traders and hedge funds in the market.