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" I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. "
Philip Roth
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Work
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Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Making fake biography, false history, concocting a half-imaginary existence out of the actual drama of my life is my life. "
Philip Roth
My Life
Fake
History
" 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
" Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive. "
Philip Roth
Life
Just
Alive
" 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
" Should you protect profits? Yes. But run for the hills? No. "
Philip Roth
You
Hills
Protect
" 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
" The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. "
Philip Roth
Paved
Road
Hell Is
" I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't. "
Philip Roth
Autobiography
Decide
Write
" All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing. "
Philip Roth
Knowing
More
Astonishing
" 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
Me
Life
" 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. "
Philip Roth
My Life
Die
Writing
" When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it. "
Philip Roth
Publish
Book
You
" If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion. "
Philip Roth
Leave
American
Delusion
" 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
" 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
" Nothing keeps its promise. "
Philip Roth
Promise
Keeps
Nothing
" 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
" 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
" Of course you bank on your experience, but as a sounding board. It isn't that you write down what happens to you every day. You wouldn't be a writer if you did that. "
Philip Roth
Down
You
Experience
" History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. "
Philip Roth
Awake
History
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
" 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. "
Philip Roth
You
College
Direction
" A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons. "
Philip Roth
Driven
Writer
Help
" As for the kind of writer I am? I am who I don't pretend to be. "
Philip Roth
Pretend
I Am
Am
" Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends. "
Philip Roth
Seriousness
Closest
Deadly
" 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
" As I see it, my focus has never been on masculine power rampant and triumphant but rather on the antithesis: masculine power impaired. "
Philip Roth
See
Power
Never