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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
Fear
Childhood
Terrors
Without
Boys
Offspring
Would
Memories
Perpetual
Wonder
Jews
Courses
Frightened
Course
Hadn
Less
Jew
Lindbergh
President
Terror
Presides

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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?
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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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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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Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.
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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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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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A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!
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Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.
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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.
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The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
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Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.
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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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Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.
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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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As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.
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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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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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Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
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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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When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.
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