Quotes from Philip Roth

Which only goes to show what everyone learns sooner or later about loss: the absence of a presence can crush the strongest people.

L'umano desiderio di un principio, una parte di mezzo e una fine - e una fine adeguata, come grandezza, a quel principio e a quella parte di mezzo - si realizzava così completamente soltanto nella materia insegnata da Coleman all'Athena College. Ma al di fuori della tragedia classica del quinto secolo a.C. aspettarsi un compimento, per non dire una giusta e perfetta conclusione, significa, per un adulto, cullarsi in una stolta illusione.

There is no you, Maria, any more than there is a me. There is only this way that we have established over the months of performing together, and what it is congruent with isn't ourselves but past performances--we're has-beens at heart, routinely trotting out the old, old act.

Ma appena desideri appassionatamente una cosa sulla quale non puoi esercitare alcun controllo, sei alla vigilia di una grossa delusione: ti stai preparando a farti mettere in ginocchio.

Ma il pericolo dell'odio è che, una volta cominciato a coltivarlo, hai cento volte più di quanto ti aspettassi. Una volta cominciato, non ti fermi più. Non conosco nulla di più difficile da controllare dell'odio. E' più facile smettere di bere che smettere di odiare. Ed è tutto dire.

Tu pleci, in timp ce altii, nu prea multi, raman pe loc, continuand sa faca ceea ce au facut dintotdeauna, iar cand te intorci, te minunezi ca-i vezi tot acolo si pe moment te simti usurat fiindca exista cineva care-si petrece intreaga viata in acelasi locsor, neavand deloc chef sa plece.

But it is INTERESTING trying to get a handle on one's own subjectivity--something to think about, to play around with, and what's more fun than that?

Così sosteneva Jerry, e così era andata. La teoria di Jerry è che lo Svedese è buono, cioè passivo, cioè uno che cerca sempre di fare le cose giuste: un carattere socialmente controllato che non esplode mai, non cede mai all'ira. Non avendo la rabbia al passivo, non l'ha neppure all'attivo. Secondo questa teoria , è la mancanza di rabbia che finisce per uccidere.

even when it felt like a hollow performance.

In America everything goes and nothing matters, while in Europe nothing goes and everything matters.

They are crying intensely, the dependable father whose center is the source of all order, who could not overlook or sanction the smallest sign of chaos - for whom keeping chaos far at bay had been intuition's chosen path to certainty, the rigorous daily given of life - and the daughter who is chaos itself.

ero una biografia in moto perpetuo, memoria sino al midollo delle ossa.

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

Even when she was dressed up she didn't look like a chosen person.

What I wanted was the tiniest thing in the world: to be like everyone else.

The life he described sounded like paradise to me; that he could think to do nothing better with his time than turn sentences around seemed to me a blessing bestowed not only upon him but upon world literature.

Nothing that befalls anyone is too senseless to have happened.

Ordinarily my mother drew no strength from scorn

The vulnerability in that smile was the surprising element- the vulnerability of our record-breaking muscleman faced with all the crudeness it takes to stay alive. The smile's refusal to recognize, let alone to sanction in himself, the savage obstinacy that seven decades of surviving requires of a man.

Yes, if only this and if only that, we'd all be together and alive forever and everything would work out fine.

Of course it should not be too surprising to find out that your life story has included an event, something important, that you have known nothing about – your life story is in and of itself something that you know very little about.

You have to enjoy power, have a certain ruthlessness, to accept the beauty and not mourn the fact that it overshadows everything else. As with any exaggerated trait that sets you apart and makes you exceptional—and enviable, and hateable—to accept your beauty, to accept its effect on others, to play with it, to make the best of it, you're well advised to develop a sense of humor.

Suppose all I have fallen in love with is that voice deliciously phrasing its English sentences? The man who died for the soothing sound of a highly calibrated relative clause.

Why doesn't she call the cops and get me shipped off to children's prison, if this is how incorrigible I really am? "Alexander Portnoy, aged five, you are hereby sentenced to hang by your neck until you are dead for refusing to say you are sorry to your mother." You'd think the child lapping up their milk and taking baths with his duck and his boats in their tub was the most wanted criminal in America.