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There's something every woman wants, and that's a man to blame.

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
Blame
Wants
Woman
Every
Something
Men

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It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.
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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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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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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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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!
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A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.
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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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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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Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
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Let's hope the first comes first.
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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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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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A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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We live in an age in which the imagination of the novelist is helpless against what he knows he is going to read in tomorrow's newspaper.
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Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.
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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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