Quote

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.

Philip Roth

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Philip Roth
Age: 85 †
Born: 1933
Born: March 18
Died: 2018
Died: May 22
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Philip Milton Roth
Mind
Presence
Requires
Habit
Silence
Enigmatic
Takes
Disappeared
Literature
Sustained
Form
Isolation
Thing
Concentration

More quotes by Philip Roth

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'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.
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Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism!
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Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.
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I know I'm not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. Writing is frustration - it's daily frustration, not to mention humiliation.
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As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.
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And as he spoke, I was thinking, 'the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives people turn stories into.
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Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.
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The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.
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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.
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Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't to phrase them was to invent them and own them.
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Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
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The legend engraved on the face of the Jewish nickel- on the body of every Jewish child!- not IN GOD WE TRUST, but SOMEDAY YOU'LL BE A PARENT AND YOU'LL KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE.
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It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.
Philip Roth
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Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.
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It's best to give while your hand is still warm.
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I'm an Obama supporter. And if you're an Obama supporter that means you had a hard time during the Bush years.
Philip Roth
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The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.
Philip Roth
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I think you're a wonder. You're beautiful. You're mature. You are, I admit, vastly more experienced than I am. That's what threw me. I was thrown. Forgive me.
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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.
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The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.
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