Philip Roth Quotes, Thoughts and images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.