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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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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
Book
Without
Writing
Work
Much
Publish
Think
Bear
Thinking
Bears
Write

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And as he spoke, I was thinking, 'the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives people turn stories into.
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I'm an Obama supporter. And if you're an Obama supporter that means you had a hard time during the Bush years.
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The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.
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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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Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.
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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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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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You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.
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The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.
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I do not say correct or savory. I do not say seemly or even natural. I say serious. Sensationally serious. Unspeakably serious. Solemnly, recklessly, blissfully serious.
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Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. the illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life.
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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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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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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.
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Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.
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Let's hope the first comes first.
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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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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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It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.
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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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