Quote

Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. the illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life.

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
Right
Illusion
Writing
Completely
Perversity
Always
Somebody
Pathological
Life
Wrong
Wreck
Turns
Wrecks
Doesn
Phenomena
Else
Someday
May
Draws

More quotes by Philip Roth

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You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.
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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The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.
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My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets — no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!
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When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'
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Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline.
Philip Roth
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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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--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others
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Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
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Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.
Philip Roth
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I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.
Philip Roth
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The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
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The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.
Philip Roth
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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
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I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.
Philip Roth
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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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Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
Philip Roth
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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
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Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.
Philip Roth
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At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't explain a thing and it's one failed explanation after another.
Philip Roth