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--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others
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
Determine
Fate
Understood
Fool
Shameless
Others
Utter
Strongly
Fools
Vanity
More quotes by Philip Roth
It's amazing how much punishment we can take.
Philip Roth
Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.
Philip Roth
I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, Is he as crazy as I am? I don’t need that question answered.
Philip Roth
Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off the belief it inspires is what counts.
Philip Roth
The hard part is, of course, the proximity of death. The number has no meaning as long as you're fit and healthy. But you know that you only have so much time left and you don't know how much it is. It could be a very short time.
Philip Roth
There's something every woman wants, and that's a man to blame.
Philip Roth
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Philip Roth
The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.
Philip Roth
A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until they die!
Philip Roth
In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees
Philip Roth
What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.
Philip Roth
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.
Philip Roth
When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.
Philip Roth
The question to ask about the writer isn't 'Why does he behave so badly?' but 'What does he gain by wearing this mask?
Philip Roth
Suicide is the role you write for yourself. You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged -- where they will find you and how they will find you. But one performance only.
Philip Roth
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
Philip Roth
Sex is all the enchantment required. Do men find women so enchanting once the sex is taken out? Does anyone find anyone that enchanting unless they have sexual business with them? Who else are you enchanted by? Nobody.
Philip Roth
The signore...wishes her to begin at the beginning.
Philip Roth
You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.
Philip Roth
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.
Philip Roth
