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" I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists. "

Philip Roth

Writer

Live

You

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" Should you protect profits? Yes. But run for the hills? No. "

" Making fake biography, false history, concocting a half-imaginary existence out of the actual drama of my life is my life. "

" 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

You

Book

" 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. "

" With the draft, everybody was involved. Everybody was fodder. When you got to be 21, 22 and graduated from college, for two years your life stopped. If you had been running in the direction of your life, you had to stop and do this other thing which was, if not menacing, just plain boring. "

" 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. "

" At night, I read. I read for two hours. I just finished a marvelous book by Louise Erdrich, 'The Round House.' But mostly I read 20th-century history and biography. I lived then. I was either a child or at school or at work. "

" 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. "

" I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here. "

" The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. "

" The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. "

" If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion. "

" I think I write and publish as often as I do because I can't bear being without a book to work on... I don't feel I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell, but I know I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living. "

" Routinely, when I finish a book, I think 'What will I do? Where will I get an idea?' And a kind of low-level panic sets in. "

" As for the kind of writer I am? I am who I don't pretend to be. "

Philip Roth

Pretend

I Am

" Writing, for me, was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my 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. "

" All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing. "

Philip Roth

Knowing

Astonishing

" I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. "

" 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. "

" My goal would be to find a big, fat subject that would occupy me to the end of my life, and when I finish it, I'll die. What's agony is starting; I hate starting them. I just want to keep writing now and end when it ends. "

Philip Roth

Hate

Life

" Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war. "

" A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until they die! "

" People are unjust to anger - it can be enlivening and a lot of fun. "

" 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

Devotion

" Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends. "

" 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

Fear

Much

" 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

" 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. "

" Nothing keeps its promise. "