Quote

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.

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
Writing
Carefully
Performance
Suicide
Performances
Role
Roles
Staged
Write
Enact
Find
Inhabit

More quotes by Philip Roth

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The hard part is, of course, the proximity of death. The number has no meaning as long as you're fit and healthy. But you know that you only have so much time left and you don't know how much it is. It could be a very short time.
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Let's hope the first comes first.
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It's amazing how much punishment we can take.
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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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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.
Philip Roth
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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.
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.
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Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline.
Philip Roth
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It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.
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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.
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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The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.
Philip Roth
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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.
Philip Roth
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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
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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I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.
Philip Roth
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The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
Philip Roth
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I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.
Philip Roth
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Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.
Philip Roth
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I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, Is he as crazy as I am? I don’t need that question answered.
Philip Roth