509 Quotes by Philip Roth

'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.

Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.

As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.

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

When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'

Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.

How Far back must we go to discover the beginning of trouble?

Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.

Suicide is the role you write for yourself. You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged -- where they will find you and how they will find you. But one performance only.