509 Quotes by Philip Roth

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.

When he is sick, every man wants his mother.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

One either imposes one's ideas or one is imposed on.

The long haul kind of wearies me, the thought of doing a book for two or three or years; and you have to rule so much else out of your life. I always knew that literature satisfied a taste for considering life in a certain way, but that it wasn't a guide to living.

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

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