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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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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
Mind
Life
Occupy
Wouldn
Rest
Book
Writing
Going
Long

More quotes by 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.
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I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.
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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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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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Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid
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When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'
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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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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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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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To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.
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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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A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!
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The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.
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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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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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As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.
Philip Roth
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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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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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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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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.
Philip Roth