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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
Up
Fear
Much
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" As for the kind of writer I am? I am who I don't pretend to be. "
Philip Roth
Pretend
I Am
Am
" A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple. "
Philip Roth
Glass
Temple
Apple
" I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here. "
Philip Roth
American
Finding
Future
" Fluency can be a sign that nothing is happening; fluency can actually be my signal to stop, while being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on. "
Philip Roth
Happening
Go
Me
" I rarely, if ever, had another book in mind while I was writing the previous book. Each book starts from ashes, really. "
Philip Roth
Ashes
Really
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. "
Philip Roth
Power
Beauty
Belief
" To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel, really. "
Philip Roth
Two
More
Devotion
" For all I know, I am beginning with the ending. My page one can wind up a year later as page two hundred, if it's still even around. "
Philip Roth
I Am
Beginning
Ending
" If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion. "
Philip Roth
Leave
American
Delusion
" Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts. "
Philip Roth
Memories
Past
Experience
" It was my great problem to solve: how to write a book, you know. And after you write one, you have to write another to prove to yourself you can do it again. "
Philip Roth
Yourself
You Can Do It
Great
" Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding? "
Philip Roth
Human
Misunderstanding
Intelligent
" I said the screen will kill the reader, and it has: the movie screen in the beginning, the television screen, and now the coup de grace, the computer screen. "
Philip Roth
Grace
Said
Television
" Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war. "
Philip Roth
Inordinately
Always
Fond
" That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader. "
Philip Roth
Memory
Looking
Life
" I've stopped reading fiction. I don't read it at all. I read other things: history, biography. I don't have the same interest in fiction that I once did. "
Philip Roth
History
Reading
Interest
" Novel-writing is, for the novelist, a game of let's pretend. "
Philip Roth
Pretend
Novelist
Game
" The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. "
Philip Roth
Moment
Right
Finding
" 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. "
Philip Roth
Desire
Done
I Am
" I'm not angry; I write about angry characters. When I'm doing that, I'm happy. Just like when I'm writing about Mickey Sabbath being lustful, I'm not feeling lustful; I'm happy. "
Philip Roth
Doing
Feeling
Writing
" Should you protect profits? Yes. But run for the hills? No. "
Philip Roth
You
Hills
Protect
" My traducers propound my alleged malefaction as though I have spewed venom on women for half a century. But only a madman would go to the trouble of writing 31 books in order to affirm his hatred. "
Philip Roth
Hatred
Trouble
Venom
" History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. "
Philip Roth
Awake
History
I Am
" I do the same kind of rewriting that I do in the shorts that I do in long books - and that is a lot. The book really comes to life in the rewriting. "
Philip Roth
Books
Book
Same
" I don't know any writer for whom it comes easily. Maybe John Updike - a story would just seem to come to him whole, you know, out of a personal experience. But the rest of us, I think, are not so lucky, and I had to work hard, yeah. "
Philip Roth
Think
Work
Work Hard
" You write differently in each book. It may appear to be similar to readers, but you're a different writer in each book because you haven't approached that subject before. And every subject brings out a different prose strain in you. Fundamentally, yes, you're contained as one writer. But you have various voices. Like a good actor. "
Philip Roth
Like
You
Book
" Let me tell you about the nap. It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man. And he said - I was maybe nine - he said, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off and put a blanket over you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right. "
Philip Roth
Me
Father
Clothes
" I'm an Obama supporter. And if you're an Obama supporter, that means you had a hard time during the Bush years. "
Philip Roth
Hard
Had
Years
" Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when. "
Philip Roth
Like
Just
Dying
" Writing is frustration - it's daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It's just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time. "
Philip Roth
Daily
Writing
You