J.D. Roth Quotes

Comedy has traditionally been about fear of embarrassment.

Writing books is one of the ways that human beings deal with loss, especially when you don't have religious consolation available.

If women envy men, we can now see that it's because of the privileges their anatomy confers and not the anatomy itself.

--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.

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

Let's hope the first comes first.

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.

The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.

I think you're a wonder. You're beautiful. You're mature. You are, I admit, vastly more experienced than I am. That's what threw me. I was thrown. Forgive me.

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.

The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.

Eventually the writing takes time. What I want to do is get the story down and I want to know what happens as I write my way into the knowledge of the story.

He was no more, freed from being, entering into nowhere without even knowing it. Just as he'd feared from the start.

I don't wish to be a slave any longer to the stringent exigencies of literature.

And as he spoke, I was thinking, 'the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives people turn stories into.

Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism!

I do not say correct or savory. I do not say seemly or even natural. I say serious. Sensationally serious. Unspeakably serious. Solemnly, recklessly, blissfully serious.

The legend engraved on the face of the Jewish nickel- on the body of every Jewish child!- not IN GOD WE TRUST, but SOMEDAY YOU'LL BE A PARENT AND YOU'LL KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE.

Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.

The signore...wishes her to begin at the beginning.

It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.

I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface

There were many hours when I never quite know how I'd gotten there or why I stayed.

When he is sick, every man wants his mother.

The question to ask about the writer isn't 'Why does he behave so badly?' but 'What does he gain by wearing this mask?

I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.

Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.

A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons.

At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't explain a thing and it's one failed explanation after another.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.

I'm an Obama supporter. And if you're an Obama supporter that means you had a hard time during the Bush years.

To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.

I miss my family, and I like being a tourist when I go back.

The only thing I won't do is theater.

I'm so scared of doing theater. I've got stage fright, although they keep asking me to come back.

I'd seen musicians act, and it scares me. And they make more money than me.

Television has changed. The very nature of it is not even television anymore.

I love the idea of messing around with different mediums.

Now, people can watch the entire first series over a period that would probably take you a couple of nights.

I started off on stage because it was the only work I could get. I haven't been back for 11 years. I think any stage experience is good experience, as far as being an actor is concerned.

My dad was a Communist Party member who fought for his country.

I get invited to an awful lot of Jewish functions.

Doing TV is a different kind of language.

Sometimes drastic change requires drastic measures.

How is it I know this little about the boy who says he loves me -- the boy whose real name is powerful enough to keep us alive in a train car full of enemies?

Choices can be made again." -Evelyn Johnson (Eaton)

There is a difference between admitting and confessing. Admitting involves softening, making excuses for things that cannot be excused; confessing just names the crimes at its full severity.

In that moment I know exactly what I want; I want to peel away all the layers of clothing between us, strip away everything that separates us, the past and the present and the future.

In order to have peace, we must first have trust.