Top Philip Roth Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Philip Roth Biography

Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933) is an American novelist.

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Philip Roth Quotes

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

Book, Happened, Kind, Routinely, Thinking, Writing

It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.

History, Hypothesis, Ideas, Stories, Unravels

I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.

Doe, Hope, New York, People, Possibilities

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

Change, Control, Fiction, Noise, Reading, Tempt

Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!

Broad, Doctors, Dream, Happens, Instead, Needs

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love. ' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

Fall, Falling, Love, Obsession, Open, Thinking

Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.

Closest Friends, Deadly, Friends, Playfulness, Seriousness

The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen and it can't compete with the computer screen I don't think. And now we have all those screens so against all those screens I think the book can't measure up.

Book, Screen, Television, Think, Thinking

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.

Book, World, Publish, Edits

The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions; the trick to living alone up here, away from all agitating entanglements, allurements, and expectations, apart especially from one's own intensity, is to organize the silence, to think of its mountaintop plenitude as capital, silence as wealth exponentially increasing. The encircling silence as your chosen source of advantage and your only intimate.

Advantage, Entanglements, Expectations, Increasing, Pain, Thinking

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!

Art, Good, Grief, Nothing, Vice, Writing

It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.

Men, Questions And Answers, Littles, Women, Questions, Push

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

Courageous, Faces, Fun, Games, See, Worst

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.

Bargained, Danger, Hatred, Hundred, Stop

Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.

Ashes, Book, Living, Process, Tell, Writing

Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid

Back, Doctor, Doctors, Lets, Say, Yid

Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.

Dark, Goes On, Sentences, Sentence, Convinces

We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there’s no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It’s in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark.

Abuse, Disobedience, Errors, Grace, Nothing, Semen

I was a biography in constant motion, memory to the marrow of my bones.

Biographies, Biography, Bones, Constant, Memories, Motion

You don't want to repeat yourself for one. You don't want to fall into the clichés for another. And you don't want to be licentious really. You want to be descriptive, if you can be. And you're not setting out to arouse anybody.

Clichés, Descriptive, Fall, Repeats, Want

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