Quote

... I vowed that I would always respect the right of an individual to kill himself. Whether suicide was a moral or immoral act I no longer felt sure, but of the dignity of its intransigence I was convinced.

Phillip Lopate

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Phillip Lopate
Age: 80
Born: 1943
Born: November 16
Film Critic
Novelist
Brooklyn
New York
Whether
Suicide
Individual
Convinced
Felt
Dignity
Right
Kill
Always
Longer
Would
Respect
Vowed
Sure
Suicidal
Moral
Immoral

More quotes by Phillip Lopate

Image
The dinner party is a suburban form of entertainment. Its spread in our big cities represents an insidious Fifth Column suburbanization of the metropolis.
Phillip Lopate
Image
Think of a dinner party as a club of revolutionaries, a technocratic elite whose social interactions that night are a dry run for some future takeover of the state.
Phillip Lopate
Image
The essay is a wonderful medium. I might mention that some writers who longed to be novelists were better as essayists: Sontag, Baldwin, Vidal, Mary McCarthy, Mailer.
Phillip Lopate
Image
My wife and daughter have accused me of being too silent at breakfast but I don't want to talk when I don't have much to say.
Phillip Lopate
Image
Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.
Phillip Lopate
Image
For most of my life, I have wanted broad impact but now, at 72, I'm not so sure that's always my first priority.
Phillip Lopate
Image
It bothers me when I can't, for example, remember a name. I don't know if it's pre-senility or whether there are too many names packed in our brains.
Phillip Lopate
Image
The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.
Phillip Lopate
Image
Hedonism can be a rational response to a difficult life.
Phillip Lopate
Image
Have fun writing, because it enhances both the writer's and reader's experience.
Phillip Lopate
Image
I like the freedom that comes with lowered expectations.
Phillip Lopate
Image
In new work, we need to see the shadow, however faint, of previous literary effort.
Phillip Lopate
Image
I am apt to be harsh in my secret judgments of others, seeing them as defective because they are not enough like me.
Phillip Lopate
Image
My other work, teaching, also is satisfying because I can be with people but in controlled circumstances, which aren't as likely to yield the pain of dealing with family.
Phillip Lopate
Image
I've had an enduring appreciation of psychology.
Phillip Lopate
Image
If someone in my family is getting emotionally bent out of shape, I've had to learn to adapt.
Phillip Lopate
Image
You must read a lot of personal essays - you needn't reinvent the wheel.
Phillip Lopate