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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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Philip Roth
Age: 85 †
Born: 1933
Born: March 18
Died: 2018
Died: May 22
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Newark
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Philip Milton 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.
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One either imposes one's ideas or one is imposed on.
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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.
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It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.
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Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.
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Let's hope the first comes first.
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Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, Why are things the way they are? Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn't even know the question existed.
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I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.
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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!
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The hard part is, of course, the proximity of death. The number has no meaning as long as you're fit and healthy. But you know that you only have so much time left and you don't know how much it is. It could be a very short time.
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Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
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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.
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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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When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.
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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!
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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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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.
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The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
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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.
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There were many hours when I never quite know how I'd gotten there or why I stayed.
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