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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.

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
Perish
Miracle
Late
Understanding
Understand
Everything

More quotes by 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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I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface
Philip Roth
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Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews.
Philip Roth
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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!
Philip Roth
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I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.
Philip Roth
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Turned the wrong way around, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied in History, harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.
Philip Roth
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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
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I haven't written a word of fiction since 2009. I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did and it's done. There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date.
Philip Roth
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Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.
Philip Roth
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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!
Philip Roth
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The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
Philip Roth
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You take off your clothes and you're in bed with somebody, and that is indeed where whatever you've concealed, your particularity, whatever it may be, however encrypted, is going to be found out, and that's what all the shyness is all about and what everybody fears.
Philip Roth
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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
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Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.
Philip Roth
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The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.
Philip Roth
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Let's hope the first comes first.
Philip Roth
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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
Philip Roth
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The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.
Philip Roth
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Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.
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.
Philip Roth