Philip Roth Quotes

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.

Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it.Interview in Esquire Magazine 10/10

Every man's endeavor was imbued with responsibility

yEvery man's endeavor was imbued with responsibility

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

Is that what eternity is for, to muck over a lifetime's minutiae? Who could have imagined that one would have forever to remember each moment of life down to its tiniest component?

In America everything goes and nothing matters, while in Europe nothing goes and everything matters.

Not to be rich, not to be famous, not to be mighty, not even to be happy, but to be civilized--that was the dream of his life.

A man who's discontents were barely known to himself, awakening in middle age to the horror of self-reflection.

There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty and Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.

There is his religion of art, my young successor: rejecting life! Not living is what he makes his beautiful fiction out of! And you will now be the person he is not living with!

How much time could you spend staring out the ocean, even if it was the ocean you'd loved since you were a boy?

He was trying hard to continue to exist as himself despite the unlikeliness of everything.

Simple is never that simple.

other people's weakness can destroy you just as much as their strength can. Weak people are not harmless. Their weakness can be their strength.

It is not our high purposes alone that make us moving creatures, but our humble needs and cravings.

I was still too much of a fledgling with people to understand that, in the long run, nobody is a picnic and that I was no picnic myself.

If you read the novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really

The Jewish man with parents still alive is a fifteen-year-old boy and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until they die.

A Jewish man with parents alive is a 15-year-old boy and will remain a 15-year-old boy until they die.

Old age isn't a battle old age is a massacre.

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.