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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
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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
Boys
Parent
Alive
Judaism
Year
Fifteen
Dies
Jewish
Years
Jew
Men
Remain
Parents
More quotes by 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
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
It's best to give while your hand is still warm.
Philip Roth
You go to someone and you think, 'I'll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse---the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.
Philip Roth
The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.
Philip Roth
Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
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
Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
Philip Roth
I work just as much as I always worked. And I can't explain the fact that there have been a series of books coming rather regularly out of me. I work most days and if you work most days and you get at least a page done a day, then at the end of the year you have 365. So the pages accumulate and then I publish the books.
Philip Roth
Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid
Philip Roth
The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.
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
You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.
Philip Roth
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
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
Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.
Philip Roth
In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees
Philip Roth
Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.
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 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.
Philip Roth