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The signore...wishes her to begin at the beginning.

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
Wishes
Begin
Beginning
Wish

More quotes by Philip Roth

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In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees
Philip Roth
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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.
Philip Roth
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He was no more, freed from being, entering into nowhere without even knowing it. Just as he'd feared from the start.
Philip Roth
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It's amazing how much punishment we can take.
Philip Roth
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World War III will be triggered off not by suppressed nationalists seeking political independence, as happened the first time around when the Serbs at Sarajevo shot the heir to the Austrian throne, but by some semiliterate, whacked-out loner who lobs a rocket into a nuclear arsenal in order to impress Brooke Shields.
Philip Roth
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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.
Philip Roth
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No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game.... It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives.
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
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The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.
Philip Roth
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Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.
Philip Roth
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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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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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The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
Philip Roth
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Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid
Philip Roth
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There were many hours when I never quite know how I'd gotten there or why I stayed.
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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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.
Philip Roth
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The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen and it can't compete with the computer screen I don't think. And now we have all those screens so against all those screens I think the book can't measure up.
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
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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