Quotes from Philip Roth

But this had happened to me more than once in my life: I had refused to allow convention to determine my conduct, only to learn, after I'd gone my own way, that my bedrock feelings were sometimes more conventional than my sense of unswerving moral imperative.

Nathan, your story, as far as Gentiles are concerned, is about one thing and one thing only. Listen to me, before you go. It is about kikes. Kikes and their love of money.

Two hundred and sixty miles round-trip, but it was worth it for Drenka's breasts.

Lo malo de la vida es que no sabes realmente si es un proceso descendente, no sabes en absoluto de qué se trata.

All of this was why, from Quahsay, I had mailed my four published stories to Lonoff. Felix Abravanel was clearly not in the market for a twenty-three-year-old son.

People say one thing, adopt a public position, and are then quite different on the inside and privately act in a totally different way. They have an expression for this: 'the shifting sands'—ramál mutaharrika

steeped like a teabag in aristocratic pretensions...

Nessuno dei pezzi di musica seria che aveva ascoltato per tutta la vita adulta gli dava la stessa emozione che ora provava ascoltando il vecchio swing: -Quel po' di stoicismo che ho dentro se ne va, e il desiderio di non morire, di non morire mai, si fa quasi insopportabile.

Simple is never that simple.

It is Jerry's theory that the Swede is nice, that is to say passive, that is to say trying always to do the right thing, a socially controlled character who doesn't burst out, doesn't yield to rage ever. Will not have the angry quality as his liability, so doesn't get it as an asset either. According to this theory, it's the no-rage that kills him in the end. Whereas aggression is cleansing or curing.

Simple was never that simple. Still, the self-questioning did take some time to reach him. And if there's anything worse than self-questioning coming too early in life, it's self-questioning coming too late.

Think of it, half the race is over, and I still stand here at the starting line—me, the first one out of his swaddling clothes and into his track suit! a hundred and fifty-eight points of I.Q., and still arguing with the authorities about the rules and regulations! disputing the course to be run! calling into question the legitimacy of the track commission!

But what affords the one with happiness affords the other with disgust. The interplay, the ridiculous interplay, enough to kill all and everyone

There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness—not all the bombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it.

the complete man - as unimpressive as he is unimpressed

Alvin didn't cry, didn't curse, didn't holler.... He was too far gone to roar on that day or even to crack. Only I did.... Only I cracked, alone, later in the one place in our house where I knew I could go to be apart from the living and all that they cannot not do.

Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn't surprise us, as astonishing to experience as it may be. You can try turning yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely.

Emotions, when they're revved up, don't change, they're the same, fresh and raw. Everything passes? Nothing passes. The same emotions are here!

There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness—not all the bombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it. The most lethal of manmade explosives can't touch it. Stand in awe not of Communism, my idiot child, but of ordinary, everyday loneliness.

Here is someone not set up for life's working out poorly, let alone for the impossible. But who is set up for the impossible that is going to happen? Who is set up for tragedy and the incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody. The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy--that is every man's tragedy.

è la mancanza di rabbia che finisce per uccidere. Mentre l'aggressività depura e guarisce.

This man did not deal in fairy tales. You could see that as soon as you walked into his office. Schevitz was somebody who liked to be proved right, somebody whose wish to prevail was his vocation.

Writing isn't hard work, it's a nightmare. Coal mining is hard work. This is a nightmare. . . There's a tremendous uncertainty that's built into the profession, a sustained level of doubt that supports you in some way. A good doctor isn't in a battle with his work. In most professions there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. With writing, it's always beginning again.

Il m'arrivait aussi, à l'occasion, d'être accosté dans les rues de New York par des inconnus qui se lançaient dans une rencontre orageuse avec moi à cause de quelque chose dans mes romans qui les séduisait ou qui les exaspérait, ou qui les séduisait parce que cela les exaspérait, ou qui les exaspérait parce que cela les séduisait.