Quotes from Philip Roth

Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride.

other people's weakness can destroy you just as much as their strength can. Weak people are not harmless. Their weakness can be their strength. A

Sembrava non capire o, anche in un momento di stanchezza, non ammettere che avere dei limiti non era poi una cosa così vergognosa, e che lui stesso non era una casa di pietra di centosettant'anni, il cui peso gravasse su imperturbabili travi di quercia: che era, insomma, qualcosa di più transitorio e misterioso.

No questions, no excuses, none of this who-am-I, what-am-I, where-am-I crap, not a grain of self-mistrust or the slightest impulse toward spiritual distinction; rather, like so many of his generation out of Newark's old Jewish slums, a man who breathed the spirit of opposition while remaining completely in accord with the ways and means of the earth.

Everything runs away, beginning with who you are, and at some indefinable point you come to half understand that the ruthless antagonist is yourself.

The burden isn't that everything has to be a book. It's that everything can be a book. And doesn't count as life until it is.

Here in America either it's Faunia Farley or it's Monica Lewinsky! The luxury of these lives disquieted so by the inappropriate comportment of Clinton and Silk!

No one with seven books in New York City settles for one piece of ass. That's what you get for a couplet.

Though I'd never forgotten Alan, I hadn't uttered his name aloud in the many years since he'd died, back in that decade when it seemed that the greatest menaces on earth were war, the atomic bomb, and polio.

Because history is not the background—history is the stage! And you are on the stage! Oh, how sickening is your appalling ignorance of your own times!

Never in my life had I so harshly judged any adult—not my parents, not even Alvin or Uncle Monty—nor had I understood till then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others. "Did you meet Mr. von Ribbentrop?" Now almost girlishly bashful, she replied, "I danced with Mr. von Ribbentrop." "Where?

Our homeland was America. Then the Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything changed.

she hopped and darted to and fro like a bird in a berry bush, trilling and twittering a series of notes as liquidly bright as a cardinal's song

One price you pay for being taken for a god is the unabated dreaminess of your acolytes.

Not to be rich, not to be famous, not to be mighty, not even to be happy, but to be civilized--that was the dream of his life.

Why is it," the unhappy teacher finally asked, "that for centuries people have hated you Jews?" Amy rose to her feet. She was stunned. "Don't ask me that!" the girl said—"ask the madmen who hate us!" And she had nothing further to do with Miss Giddings as a friend—or with anyone else who asked her anything about what they couldn't possibly understand.

Meneer Portnoy,' zei ze terwijl ze haar knapzak optilde, 'u bent alleen maar een jood die een hekel heeft aan zichzelf.' 'Ah, maar Naomi, dat zijn misschien juist de beste.

Waarom zou ik behoefte hebben aan een monument in mijn naam terwijl er op straat zo'n feestbanket rondloopt?

And talking about books as though something were at stake in a book. Not opening up a book to worship it or be elevated by it or to lose yourself to the world around you. No, boxing with the book.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again. It is artificial and, even then, bought at the price of an obstinate estrangement from oneself and one's history.

La vejez no es una batalla; la vejez es una masacre.

Anger is to make you effective. That's its survival function. That's why it's given to you. If it makes you ineffective, drop it like a hot potato.

Dottor Spielvogel, questa è la mia vita, la mia unica vita, e la sto vivendo da protagonista di una barzelletta ebraica! Io sono il figlio in una barzelletta ebraica… solo che non è affatto una barzelletta!

He has outlived dissatisfaction. This is what remains after the passing of everything, the disciplined sadness of stoicism. This is the cooling. For so long it's so hot, everything in life is so intense, and then little by little it goes away, and then comes the cooling, and then comes the ashes.