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One either imposes one's ideas or one is imposed 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
Imposes
Imposed
Either
Ideas

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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!
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The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.
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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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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.
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Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.
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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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Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
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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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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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You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.
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Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.
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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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What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.
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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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It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.
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Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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