Quote

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

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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
Sequence
Unravels
Hypothesis
Subordinate
Meaning
Persuasive
Force
Subordinates
History
Bind
Facts
Construct
Stories
Constructs
Ideas
Autobiography

More quotes by Philip Roth

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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.
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One either imposes one's ideas or one is imposed on.
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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.
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I do not say correct or savory. I do not say seemly or even natural. I say serious. Sensationally serious. Unspeakably serious. Solemnly, recklessly, blissfully serious.
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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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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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Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't to phrase them was to invent them and own them.
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Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
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You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.
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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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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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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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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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To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.
Philip Roth
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Let's hope the first comes first.
Philip Roth
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The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.
Philip Roth
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I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.
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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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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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