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" 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. "
Philip Roth
Panic
Will
Think
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" The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. "
Philip Roth
Moment
Right
Finding
" 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
" 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. "
Philip Roth
Every Day
End
Day
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when. "
Philip Roth
Like
Just
Dying
" Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war. "
Philip Roth
Inordinately
Always
Fond
" 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
" Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive. "
Philip Roth
Life
Just
Alive
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Philip Roth
Know
Writing
Work
" 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
" If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion. "
Philip Roth
Leave
American
Delusion
" History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. "
Philip Roth
Awake
History
I Am
" I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. "
Philip Roth
About
Work
Ask
" A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons. "
Philip Roth
Driven
Writer
Help
" 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
" Nothing keeps its promise. "
Philip Roth
Promise
Keeps
Nothing
" 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
" The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. "
Philip Roth
Paved
Road
Hell Is
" Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding? "
Philip Roth
Human
Misunderstanding
Intelligent
" 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
" When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it. "
Philip Roth
Publish
Book
You
" 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
" 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