509 Quotes by Philip Roth

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

In human society, thinking’s the greatest transgression of all.

I curled myself around these dreams and I began to be happy.

And talking about books as though something were at stake in a book. Not opening up a book to worship it or be elevated by it or to lose yourself to the world around you. No, boxing with the book.

I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, "Is he as crazy as I am?" I don’t need that question answered.

In my parents' day and age, it used to be the person who fell short. Now it's the discipline. Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it's the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can't learn it, so there is something wrong with it. And there is something especially wrong with the bad teacher who wants to teach it. There are no more criteria, Mr. Zuckerman, only opinions.

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

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.

In school we chanted, along with our teacher, I am the Captain of my fate, I am the Master of my soul, and meanwhile, within my own body, an anarchic insurrection had been launched by one of my privates- which I was helpless to put down!