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It's amazing how much punishment we can take.

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
Take
Much
Punishment
Amazing
Suffering

More quotes by Philip Roth

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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!
Philip Roth
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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.
Philip Roth
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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.
Philip Roth
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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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'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.
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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Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid
Philip Roth
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There were many hours when I never quite know how I'd gotten there or why I stayed.
Philip Roth
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I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
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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It's best to give while your hand is still warm.
Philip Roth
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The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.
Philip Roth
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Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.
Philip Roth
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I know I'm not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. Writing is frustration - it's daily frustration, not to mention humiliation.
Philip Roth
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When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'
Philip Roth
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A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!
Philip Roth
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I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface
Philip Roth
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In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees
Philip Roth
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The legend engraved on the face of the Jewish nickel- on the body of every Jewish child!- not IN GOD WE TRUST, but SOMEDAY YOU'LL BE A PARENT AND YOU'LL KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE.
Philip Roth
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Let's hope the first comes first.
Philip Roth