Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war. "
Philip Roth
Inordinately
Always
Fond
Related Quotes:
" 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 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
" A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons. "
Philip Roth
Driven
Writer
Help
" History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. "
Philip Roth
Awake
History
I Am
" 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
" Novel-writing is, for the novelist, a game of let's pretend. "
Philip Roth
Pretend
Novelist
Game
" 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
" The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. "
Philip Roth
Paved
Road
Hell Is
" 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
" 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
" I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. "
Philip Roth
About
Work
Ask
" When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it. "
Philip Roth
Publish
Book
You
" Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends. "
Philip Roth
Seriousness
Closest
Deadly
" 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 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
" Nothing keeps its promise. "
Philip Roth
Promise
Keeps
Nothing
" If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion. "
Philip Roth
Leave
American
Delusion
" Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive. "
Philip Roth
Life
Just
Alive
" 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
" 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
" As for the kind of writer I am? I am who I don't pretend to be. "
Philip Roth
Pretend
I Am
Am
" 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
" The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. "
Philip Roth
Moment
Right
Finding
" 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
" Should you protect profits? Yes. But run for the hills? No. "
Philip Roth
You
Hills
Protect
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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