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At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't explain a thing and it's one failed explanation after another.

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
Even
Explanation
Thing
Explain
Trying
Misery
Going
Stage
Doesn
Another
Certain
Anything
Failed

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Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't to phrase them was to invent them and own them.
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It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.
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You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.
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There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.
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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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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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One either imposes one's ideas or one is imposed on.
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No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game.... It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives.
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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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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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You take off your clothes and you're in bed with somebody, and that is indeed where whatever you've concealed, your particularity, whatever it may be, however encrypted, is going to be found out, and that's what all the shyness is all about and what everybody fears.
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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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Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.
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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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There's something every woman wants, and that's a man to blame.
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Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.
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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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I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface
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The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.
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He was no more, freed from being, entering into nowhere without even knowing it. Just as he'd feared from the start.
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