Philip Roth Quotes

For discipline is imposed not just on oneself but on those in one's orbit.

The pompous son of a bitch knows everythingit's too bad he doesn't know anything else.

There was always something about our family, and I don't mean color--there was something about us that impeded you. You think like a prisoner. You do, Coleman Brutus. You're white as snow and you thin...

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...

…[T]he whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, whi...

There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty and Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.

Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.

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.

In America everything goes and nothing matters, while in Europe nothing goes and everything matters.

This is the plot up to the moment when the writer leaves the woman still dolefully enmeshed in it, and, suitcase in hand, tiptoeing so as not to disturb her postcoital rest, he himself slips silently...

You think you know what a man is? You have no idea what a man is. You think you know what a daughter is? You have no idea what a daughter is. You think you know what this country is? You have no idea...

And since we don't just forget things because they don't matter but also forget things because they matter too much-- because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings...

It’s about life, where the tiniest misstep can have tragic consequences. Oh,

And I experienced the bitter helplessness of a taunted old man dying to be whole again.

I work all day, morning and afternoon, just about every day. If I sit there like that for two or three years, at the end I have a book.

Exhibitionismul inerent unei marturisiri nu face decat sa agraveze suferinta.

Better for real things to be uncontrollable, better for one's life to be undecipherable and intellectually impenetrable than to attempt to make casual sense of what is unknown with a fantasy that is m...

You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare.

How much time could you spend staring out the ocean, even if it was the ocean you'd loved since you were a boy?

Alvin didn't cry, didn't curse, didn't holler.... He was too far gone to roar on that day or even to crack. Only I did.... Only I cracked, alone, later in the one place in our house where I knew I cou...