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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
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Philip Milton Roth
President
Terror
Presides
Fear
Childhood
Terrors
Without
Boys
Offspring
Would
Memories
Perpetual
Wonder
Jews
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Frightened
Course
Hadn
Less
Jew
Lindbergh

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The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.
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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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The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
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One either imposes one's ideas or one is imposed on.
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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.
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In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees
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The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions.
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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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It's best to give while your hand is still warm.
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The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.
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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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When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'
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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.
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The signore...wishes her to begin at the beginning.
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I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.
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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.
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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
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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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