Philip Roth Quotes

For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

It's amazing how much punishment we can take.

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

You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.

Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.

Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.

A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.

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

Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it.

There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.

Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.

Everyone becomes a part of history whether they like it or not and whether they know it or not.

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.

People are unjust to anger - it can be enlivening and a lot of fun.

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.

It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

It's best to give while your hand is still warm.

Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.

Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.

You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.

The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.

There's something every woman wants, and that's a man to blame.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.

Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.

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

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.